phrase of the day: pumpkin soup tastes like novemeber

good week. Was paid to go to Milan and help set up an exhibition for three SACI alumni. Got put up in a 3 star hotel with one of the artists he snored like crazy but I had headphone and listened to Bill Evans while slowly falling sleep. Made my way to lake Como and got lost in the forest after finding this abandoned crumbling stairwell that led to overgrown plants and a fence the "trail" seemingly stopped until I climbed around the fence, through thorns and webs of plants up the steep grade of the mountainside till I arrived at another fence, and then another...which I climbed over to find an old vineyard that now housed several mansions and the ground keepers who were friendly but astonished that I was on the property and asked how I got there.....I wanted to say by parachute but was more vague and said something about a stairwell that made no sense to them because really the stairwell didnt exist unless you crawled through the woods abit. They opened the electronic gate for me by remote.

Lake Como is in the shape of a Y. there are mountains and stray cats. And old women that try and convince you that the bus is better then the water taxi. I find a beach to swim with a dead seagull and an abandoned sweater hung to a fence. Just the sun and the mountains and the loose stones. The small frail clouds and the pastel color of tiny homes in the distance.

My friend little ray came to visit on Friday..... well 2 in the morning on Saturday. I managed to arrange a bicycle for him and found a new one myself (!). We ride bikes very fast and pretend that the streets are little racetracks. For upon meeting ray at the train station I made a little sign that read "water buffalo" on it with each letter painted in a different color. So he wouldn’t walk by me. and i could walk him to his limo with the bikes stashed We find piazza sant spirito and watch crazy drunken men try and dance to jimmy hendrixesc guitar playing with amplifier... one Hispanic man was singing what must have been some ancient lullaby that he learned as a child...he started tapping the acoustic guitar with his fingers pretending to be famous. I didn’t see him start tapping his head against it but ray said later that he had.

Then my mom and our friend Bonnie came to visit and got me too do mad amounts of traveling for the week. From Rome to Venice and my third time to the ocean to swim and hike.....to lie in the sun and fall asleep. To eat pizza and climb to the top of an old castle.... we also took this really amazing tour into the Chianti hills and sample very expensive wine. Our tour guide was funny and would laugh a lot. My favorite part was the wine cellars and the smell of French oak barrels holding 300 bottles. I began to drink wine again....and I eat too much pasta. Its not really a cliché it just sort of happens...its everywhere.

I had a traumatic tooth incident. My fake front tooth became broken after biting into a piece of very hard bread. it fell out on the counter top and lay there mocking my toothless grin/ frown...depending on how it changed from one to the other. Its interesting to me how I had become so incredibly self-conscious from this. We associate so much with our mouths from conversations.......actually I superglued the tooth back together and into my mouth...I think that this isn’t the best protocol...but hey sometime to improvise is the only strategy. This lasted like two days then I had to buy some polygrip. I've become very antisocial in public from this...for two whole days I didn’t put the tooth back in because it would just fall back out whenever I would have to speak with anybody.. like to order food or something I would say something practically inaudible...maybe it would have been better to have written little notes on the palms of my hands, hopefully this week I reach a more permanent smile. My mom reminded me of the time my brother threw a remote control for the television at me on thanksgiving when we were very young and it knocked one of my baby teeth out. At least in that situation I had somebody else to blame…sorry jon.

Tonight I went to a concert at this wonderful theater. Five years ago I saw a show at the same place. Each time i've been there it’s managed to be extremely stuffy and warm. This has continually caused me to be sleepy. Three times now. The same place. very sleepy. this time I decided not to fight it and just let myself drift off halfway through. I woke up just as the performance was ending. the violin, cello and piano become so unbelievably clear and warm (maybe coincidence).. when waking up from a moment of sleep sometimes everything can become really fuzzy and impressionable....I tried this once with an alarm clock that could wake you up from the cd you put inside. It never really worked well because I just began disliking the music that would make me get out of bed. but naps are a lot different anyhow.

I've been having dreams about miniature dachshunds and dolphins. fixed my new bike for the seventh time. made a drawing on a yellow wall in a little vending machine place where you can buy instant pasta of a bird holding an umbrella. bought a bottle of wine today from 1997. cut half of my beard because it was making me head look too round. found a stuffed animal bird on the street and hid it under this little sidewalk level window so I could come back and get it but my roommate found it and brought it into the apartment. he thinks it is his but I got him to split it with me. i'm trying to get Monday Thursday and Saturday. its blue and red on one side and black and white on the other. printed my first photograph since I’ve been in Italy of a man sitting under a tree. I can’t stop thinking about how everybody I walk pass on the streets has so many different stories to tell....or different tastes for food. or different ways of holding their armpits when waiting in line. or different gelato choices (like chocolate or lemon) of different ways of highfiving (sometimes mostly a confusing look in their eyes, sometimes really excited) i played pick up sticks in a park for the first time it was at night and with candles and blankets and the candles were in the shape of a flying saucer and an alien. I don’t know why they did this but then the candles were set free across the pond and continued to burn and float and burn and float...sort of a confusing and/or gratifying sight to see. not sure why though.

this weekend i managed to find my way back to the Cinque Terre. getting stung by jelly fish with hearty smiles, jumping off thirty foot cliffs, hiking in the dark to a naturalists (nudist) beach to lay our sleeping bags and listen to the tide push and pull the heavy rocks carelessly bellow us.

just after sunset, before we had reached our destination, we watch from atop a large bluff the ocean like a giant metallic dish, the colors split apart and bend into tiny little pixels, barely visible currents in repetition, looking far off over the horizon the continents held together by the imagination of some belief in certainty, some buried memory. seagulls cry into the air, maybe laugh at our hiking outfits. no one says anything back. i have butterfly's on my shirt flying about an old wicker basket.

at night the beach we sleep on is the color of gray. or a mix of black and orange and white. maybe full of dust or like an old daguerreotype photograph....something rummaged out from a relatives attic. we sleep on rocks. my air mattress is mended with a tire tube patch. has proven unable to function correctly. the wind pushes the tall grass behind our heads. the grapes smell ripe and smashed to the earth. every thirty minutes i wake up thinking the clouds will open rain onto our dry slumbering faces.

in the morning my friends wake up well rested. my back hurts. i do some stretches and notice a fully tanned bald man naked on the rocks forty feet bellow us washing himself with a towel.
soon after we pack up our bags to continue the trail onward towards the remaining two villages. instead of going back up the mountain we thought there must be a short cut. we then stumble upon a tunnel with two Italian man eating breakfast near the entrance both wearing the most amazing mustaches that I've ever seen. they stop us and explain the fee for shaving an hour off our hiking time to Corniglia. they also explain to us that the naturalist beach is what the fee is mostly for....the bald man makes more sense...... we talk him down from fifteen euro to five. his flannel was the most beautiful in all of Italy. we told him he was lucky to have found such flannel.

the tunnel was of an old railroad a mile long. the air was dank and sharp. the sound of water trickling down the interior walls. each brick twenty five feet above us perfectly set by hand. Jeff mentions how insane it would be to actually have to build something like this.....where would you begin to start?

i think about how each moment, no matter how far in the past or how distant
only becomes real...or takes shape once we are there to interpret it....once there is a witness.... like the creation and purpose of this particular tunnel, the many times its been used, the experiences others have gained.....at this moment for some reason these all seemed inconsequential...as if the tunnel was created solely for our presence.....only this specific moment. the function now for the thousands of bricks, metal rods and concrete all shaped, smoothed and rounded together....in this moment with it hanging far above bracing the earth from caving in over our heads...its sole function was not to come crashing down on us while guiding our way to our next destination.

once we arrive to the end there is a little white button that needs to be pressed to open a red metallic gate. at this exact moment a train was passing overhead from the modern segment of railway nearby....while the door continued to open, more and more white light began to spill into the dimly lit space from the sunny afternoon sky. an amazing rush of air then came tumbling in threatening to knock each of us to the muddy earth or maybe back to where we had come....soon the wind diminished and the sounds began to fade of riveted train tracks bracing a giant body of steel carrying its many passengers and moving quickly through the distance...we thought that maybe it was just a lucky coincidence.