I've got plans like nobody's business

No really.

Some news:
I am no longer homeless, that's one thing.
I have photos, physical photos, and there are lots of them, and only a few don't suck, but that's to be expected.
I saw a really depressing movie that involved Thomas Bernhard sitting on a bench.
I read Remainder by Tom McCarthy, Dracula, Prose by Bernhard, Amras by Bernhard, and finishing Gargoyles by Bernhard. None have been particularly cheery. I was going to read all the books by Bernhard before I watched the movie, but there were other things.
Like building a display/altar dedicated to Sergei Parajanov.
and, as always beastin'
I got a chord organ. It's pretty neat.

As for the future:
Beauty school -- because why not? I already cut people's hair. Might as well take some classes and get paid. Also, puts loans on backburner and solves second job issues in the long run.
Ph D applications -- I think I know what I'm going into. Finally.
Project galore -- no comment, duh.
Georgian Choir -- YES
Record collection -- I'm going to need one because I'm getting a record player.
Next trip. Boy oh boy, it's going to be epic.

this is where i live

CAMP!

 

road to/from Racos

 

campsite

bridge we have to take in/out of Racos

my (now broken, but repaired and standing) tent

more coming, like the views I wake up to which still seem like something from another life

updates here

quick stop in Brasov... black tower, a stream nearby... 45s on the bottom

about time to go missing

going going gone

A large part of becoming an adult is learning how to remain a child.

People one meets in hostels -- phantasms, physical representations of ephemera, doors that are just as real as they are imaginary, flung open in a way proportionate to the amount of revelations one can have. It is all music, all intervals, sudden loss of electricity that turns everyone to cigarettes and noise-making. I will see your never. Herringbone. Houndstooth. Paisley. Arabesque on ice.

"Coma is for the living." -- Beckett, Malone Dies

I'll be back in five weeks.
Them bears ain't got nuthin' on me.

the downside of obsolete

After the hail storm in Budapest hit my tape recorder, everything I recorded over the past three weeks somehow disappeared and got replaced, from the very beginning of side A, with the gypsy music festival recording from last night... I did not rewind the tape; it seems that the walkman was recording backwards.

That's how it works, I guess. Back to the un-future.
The one thing I truly regret is the loss of the Texan's monologue.



Budapest things:

trainfood

eating on trains has become quite a trend in my life; it is something to look forward to, plan for...
I am clearly not alone.

  

 
more updates here, photographic and not

belatered: things in Bucharest, including graffiti and spidermen

 Overall, Bucharest presents in itself a most drastic contrast between utter decrepitude and complete renovation. It not at all subtle: there are excavating machines on every other corner of the historical center. One side of each street is modern, shiny and new, inhabited by innumerable and mostly overpriced  cafes, while the other side has things like this.

 

 I thought this was funny. I am twelve. I am pus pe toti.

 <---- this was a mystery

                                                           cat --->

coastlife

some pretty old jars beside the archaeological museum

I would like to meet the forty-four Jews of Constanța.

It's been all beach & kebab and ruins. Jeff's here. We've been eating lots of cheese [and kebabs; I've temporarily relinquished my vegetarianism for a variety of reasons].

Some Frenchmen are incomprehensible.

some small realities

Shemdegi sadguri: Bucuresti [tomorrow]

People, Sibiu:

 

streets just grow out of other streets, archways, holes in walls

The historical museum has a room full of gravestones, mostly 17th century

 a humorous approach to restoration

further evidence of my continuing presence

 I am planning to do a whole post of stained glass windows sometime soon. Gathering evidence, I guess.

Cuisine Across Oceans or: Canadians, Were You Lying?

Apparently, Canada is not the only place that can claim poutine.

 

 Who did it first, eh?

But then, there is this:

 

 

                                                       erm... # 1 in Romania?

 

Romanians do know where to keep their televisions.











In other observations, I think it is almost ironic that in Transylvania, every other door either directly leads to or has a sign advertising a dentist's office.

that's not over-exposure, that's godlike radiance!

And, in case anyone was wondering, I am very much alive and well, as you can see in these [great] photos. Churches are convenient for these self-timed shots because there are lots of benches to prop a camera on, few people, and hence little chance of getting robbed.

um, just tryin' to fit in, guys

<---- cat









[real pictures & stuff here]

culture and culture

Got fondled by a tipsy middle-aged Romanian in a minivan. 

A joke some Australians made today:

--What's the difference between a tub of yogurt and Australia?

-- After 200 years a tub of yogurt would have some culture.

I met someone today who is hiking, as in, walking, from Germany to Constanța. He has been hiking for fifty days now. 

Turda (many more pictures here):

Head Cheese and Texas Country

Somehow, head cheese has become a running joke in my hostel in Cluj, after I mentioned it once. Somehow, the joke is sexual.

I also found out that "Texas Country" is apparently a whole separate genre of music.I am fairly certain it is my new least favorite genre of music.

we are planets, all

Some updates here.

this is really wonderful, from a film by Bela Tarr, the Hungarian director who also made Satantango.

Humped Crossing

Trying to hail a cab to JFK: should not take an hour.
Flight out of JFK to London Heathrow: delayed
Flight to Budapest: missed
Fun in the free hotel room: over
New flight to Budapest: delayed
Dr. Bronner's: confisated by the jealous Brits
Sign of the day: "Humped crossing", car park near Heathrow <--- describes this journey pretty well

Off With My Head: I Would Like to Have More Than One

Getting on an airplane in a little while. I am certainly looking forward to the part where I get to sleep.
Sudden moving is good for travel anxiety reduction. According to USPS, my [now old] apartment is a business. They must be confusing us with Dr Marks, the dead dentist who used to occupy the premises.

pastels & chalk on bedroom wall, self-made, self-destroyed

outside: rain
me: what's growing?
home: less
burial: the opposite
uncovering: what?
smoke signals: effective
morning: simulacra
cat: scratch & swallow
new: i have a really sharp knife
old: most of these pears are bad
what: this is why I do poorly on standardized tests
analogy: the sun is disproportionate to my hand at the 15 degree angle
this: is not an analogy
am I nervous: did the chicken cross the road?

old selves

pastels on bedroom wall, self-made, self-destroyed

two things I found in my journal, both from 2008, somehow appropriate to my current state:

1. Home holds the remembrance of everything unsaid and is therefore questionable.

2. Here is the end to all means: analytical thinking.

Dancing with the Urinals

When we were in the one-car train going from Tq'ibuli to Kutaisi, at one point, this was on the unexpected TV screen right in front of us. I am not actually sure what to say, still, even though it's been a few months.

Expectations?

My friend Jeff sent me this today. The subject line of his email read :"I hope this happens to you". 
[it comes from here]

"About 10 years ago I was on an archeological dig in northern Israel where we uncovered two sealed earthenware jars full of pre-Hellenistic honey (about 2200 years old). My dig leader told us the same thing, and then offered us the opportunity to taste it. Only a few people dared, me being one. It tasted like honey. We then sent the jars off to be examined. Back in the states, we were in a lab with most of the people who were on the dig, and the results of the tests came back in. My professor/dig leader read the opening few lines and then slowed. He said, somberly, "Now some of you took me up on my offer to try the honey. If you are one of those people, I offer you now the chance to leave the room." No one moved. "Ok...you asked for it. In the bottom of the jar of honey there remained the blanched bones of an infant child," he said. "What maybe I should have told you is that often pre-Hellenistic cultures would offer their stillborn children to the sun god in earthenware jars of honey. It seems over the last two thousand years all but the bones have disintegrated and been absorbed by the honey."
TLDR: I've eaten 2000 year old dead baby."

two things

photo also appears in the poem Fall

My dentist, who is also a clown, told me today that I have an enlarged uvula.

My father, who is not a clown, (he's a mathemagician) told me that they are working on a cell phone that you can charge with your voice.






 <--- This is Chris Santiago. He is my roommate. His uvula looks quite 
        nice. He is an anthropolyjest.


 

warpeace everywhere

And of course, today is when I stumble upon this article.

To sum it up:
"Mr Lavryonov, the official behind the controversial new project, said he wanted to give Russians a place where they could come and remember 1812.
  "Finding the remains will really be complicated because two hundred years have gone by. <...> But I think if we want we can find them. <...> There is now no place where people can come and bow down and lay wreathes," he said."

You know, I just got this vision of all these Russians who've been all torn up inside because they haven't anywhere to put a wreath in commemoration of the War of 1812...

C'mon guys, just re-read your favorite passages from War and Peace while listening to Overture to 1812 and snacking on some Borodinsky bread (it's quite good, I promise).

      Jokes aside, I am all for remembering history. Really. I've spent many days and nights writing unsuccessful verses about the dangers of collective amnesia, neglect of history, and misunderstanding of memory and its powers.
     But scrounging up some remains, taking them from the place they've been, however messily, buried for 200 years and moving them in an attempt to ape the French... that's not remembering history, that's making things up. Not to mention that it is also a great expense, and most of the country lives far below the poverty line.

     Borodino, the place where the incredibly long and bloody battle happened and from where the remains are to be transported, is about 75 miles from Moscow.  That is where all those soldiers fell.  That is the place that everyone should know about. You can't just decide that it's inconveniently located, and move some bones over to Moscow, so everyone can come tip their hats. I mean, one can do all that. Maybe that's the whole point: it's a yet another bout of "look what I can do," except now nobody's really looking.

*

location: Butler library, 8th floor

 

<-----  unrelated
         [also known as non sequitur picture of [unspecified amount of time]]