Freya called me from her father’s farm outside Copenhagen . . . we spoke for three whole hours. She insisted it be a video call. I relented. My hair was wild and I was hidden behind blackout curtains in my shadowy apartment, while Freya glowed beneath the Danish sun near a building she said formally housed horses. She told me she’s in Europe for a month. I said: “Freya, for God’s sake, you got to come to Berlin . . .” and 24 hours later she was trapped inside a bus and barreling through Germany, including Berlin, to get to the Czech Republic. And yet she could not stop here . . . she had to get to some rural village to visit her great-grandmother’s house. Or anyway, I think that’s what she said . . .

My sister and I are meeting our cousin Jack in Austria next week, and then I’m going to Italy with Bex and Nicole the week after that . . . but I have got to figure out a way to see Freya before she goes back to Rochester. I have not seen her since I was there a couple years ago, having come down from Toronto and Buffalo (where, as usual, I was interrogated at the US border). I began writing about that trip from my hotel room in downtown Rochester as it was unfolding but never finished it. As I recall, I was experiencing a sort of nervous breakdown for reasons that had nothing to do with Rochester.

HOWEVER . . .

I can see that I uploaded some photos I took back then, ones where Freya happily indulged my grandmotherly instinct to have her pose for pictures all over town (lol):

And here’s us at some fancy-ish bar:

How Tim Burton has not yet discovered Freya, I know not.

I believe my nervous breakdown began after I left Freya that night. I never told her so. It was well below freezing outside but I insisted on amplifying my misery by walking all the way back to my hotel, which was at least two miles away. The sidewalks were slicked with a sheet of rock-hard ice about three inches thick. It was a precarious situation. I think secretly I hoped something would kill me. And yet I live. Listen: no one has ever accused me of being a sensible person . . .

ANYWAY . . .

I’ve known Freya for nearly a decade. We met at the Fairyland sign in Oakland and for whatever reason, she trusted me immediately. I can’t really think of anyone else quite like her. I told her that on the phone. I said also, almost as a lark: “Freya, if you’re not doing anything in a year, do you wanna get married or something?” She did not say no. At her behest, we then spent an hour listing off all the pros and cons about ourselves to each other, and decided that taken altogether, it’d probably work.

I told her one of my cons is that I’m just smart enough to know how dumb I am, which is one of the worst psychic pains I know. However, this did not seem to bother her.

Thing is, we’ve both been emotionally annihilated too many times now. It can really wear on you, especially when, year after year, you keep discovering new ways someone can hurt you. You think you’ve been hurt in all the ways a person can be hurt, and then here comes some new unknown terror. I don’t like it. So why bother searching the wild world for a stranger who would, in all likelihood, just as soon leave you bleeding to death on the side of the road? I mean, here I am, and here’s Freya. Why not?? I’ll take good care of her, here at the end of all things.

MEANWHILE . . .

A thin beam of sunlight cut through my red velvet blackout curtains and shone upon my exposed forearm, which then began to smoke. And so saying: I need to close the curtains tightly and then eat a handful of valerian root and magnesium to hopefully sedate my malfunctioning body into a mild coma.

And if that doesn’t work? . . .

Call me Ishmael!!

I finally got Emma to read MOBY-DICK . . .

it is 4:30 a.m. and a hypnotic command has been beamed to me from london . . . i will oblige

i’m a tumblr girl now

(i do love FALLEN ANGELS though . . .)

A moment later he was back downstairs, stepping out onto the dark sidewalk. Well, that was that. It had scarcely worked out as he intended. On the other hand, he reflected stoically, he had lost nothing . . . except perhaps his dignity. And that, given time, would return.

—CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON

. . . sounds like something I would write, and certainly an experience I often have. Although, as for myself, I’m not sure about the last sentence . . .

What do I need dignity for anymore? It’s not like anyone is going to give it to you anyway. You’re lucky enough if someone even acknowledges your humanity. Forget about being afforded dignity. I’ll just stay home. Hah!

Today Bex and Nicole the Olivetti Girl and I booked our flights to Milan, rented a house in Northern Italy about an hour outside the city, and reserved a rental car for the Long Holiday Weekend, which is in two and a half weeks . . . I’m so excited I’m going to throw up. On July 31st I fly out from Berlin, and they’re coming from London. And we will meet at Milan Malpensa Airport (MXP) around noon on the 31st, and be glad. I am going to hug them both so tightly.

This is from back in December when I was sadder than hell about some things . . . these two always seem to know when I could use the encouragement . . .

FOR THOSE WHO
CAME IN LATE . . .

. . . here are Bex (my (former?) fiancée) and Nicole (heiress to the Olivetti typewriter fortune (or what’s left of it—Nicole says it’s just a bunch of old, barely functional typewriters in her parents’ basement in Italy . . . which apparently we’re going to visit).

I took this photo at Bex’s show in London last spring. You know, I began writing an essay about that trip (and visiting Madrid the week before) during an hour-long train ride from Edinburgh to Galashiels to visit the Aero Leather factory . . . then LIFE HAPPENED and, having no alternative, I kept on living it. (Sometimes I wish I hadn’t. Oops!) But I reckon I ought to finish that essay, if only to have a place to put all those pictures I took, not least of all the aforementioned Angels of London. Why not?

ANYWAY . . .

We got the house in Italy. Get a load of this fuckin place:

. . . and look at the host’s bio:

Uh . . . whoa. YES.

Aw!

Though yeah: two bedrooms, four beds, a balcony, an outdoor patio / garden with a cute little table and chairs . . . and a bidet. Sounds good to me. Hopefully I share a room with Bex [blushing emoji]. Hey man, relax . . . we’re card-carrying night owls and have a long history of staying up all night talking in bed.

Remember what the fella said:

How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair.

(If I’m Ishmael, which by all accounts I am, does that make Bex dear Queequeg . . . ?)

Julia came over last night and watched MAD MAX: FURY ROAD with me. She has asked me to show her Really Good Movies, and so of course I had to show her one of the best ones anyone has ever made. At exactly the halfway mark, round about midnight, Bex called me. I said, “I gotta take this. She’s my fiancée, after all . . . at least I think she is . . .” We spoke at length on speaker phone (so Julia would feel included :,-)) about the logistics of our Italian Adventure. She’d created a doc and everything. We hashed it out for half an hour, and then I told her we had to get back to FURY ROAD . . . Julia’s film education depended upon this. We agreed to reconvene with the Olivetti Girl the next day, which I ended up handling on my own on account of Nicole calls me during her walk home from work twice a week at this point (I love it) . . .

But last night, upon getting off the phone with Bex, I turned to Julia and told her that Bex is one of the best people I’ve ever met in my life. She’s loyal and interesting and utterly unique. She’s never let me down. And of course we are spiritually soul-bound as she is my fellow Aquarian sister. And we may or may not be engaged. I really ought to clarify that with her.

Anyway: Julia and I finished FURY ROAD. Afterwards, she turned to me and said: “Thank you for showing me this. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” I felt a warmth in my heart.

FINALLY . . .

As I said, we have rented a car. I’ll be doing all the driving on account of I’m always the driver . . . I’m the go-getter. You just tell me what you want me to go get. I told Bex and Nicole also that I’m low maintenance, that I don’t care where we go or what we do, that I would be, for example, perfectly content hanging around a landfill all weekend if it means I get to be with them. As usual, I meant it. As usual . . .

I’M JUST HERE FOR THE GASOLINE

. . . so to speak.

Something we are for sure going to do, other than eat good food and swim in crystal-clear lakes, is visit Switzerland for a few hours. For those of you with a shaky grasp of geography, Italy borders Switzerland, and the border is quite close to where we’ll be hanging out:

I have never been to Italy nor Switzerland before, so I may as well go see the land of milk and honey, what with it being so close to Italy and all. I have a cartoonish / not-serious rivalry with the Swiss, who are seemingly rich and unbothered and live in a sort of bucolic paradise largely devoid of strife. You might argue that makes them soft . . . I don’t suppose it is breeding ground for inspiring rebelliousness. Consider that their cowardly neutrality absolved them of having to fight in either of the two World Wars. While the rest of Europe was burning to the ground and perishing in great numbers to ward off Hitler’s dark agenda for world domination, the Swiss sat around counting gold coins and making chocolate bars. Or anyway, it’s funny to imagine that. (It’s probably true though . . .)

I defer to my hero Orson Welles:

On that note . . . it is now five in the morning and the sky is lightening outside my balcony window. I’m a bum, a beautiful bum, and so I have no pressing need to wake up early, nor wake up at all really . . . but I do need my beauty rest. I feel insane right now, if I’m being honest. Sleep will not save me, but it will keep me from thinking . . . the conscious kind of thinking, that is. Unfortunately I’m still going to end up in Nightmareland, as is my wont.

Yeah . . .

Yeah (lol) . . .

Well! Sweet dreams . . . or would you freaks prefer “sogni d’oro”?? ☆彡

aw lol