Dread, patrician clouds quarried
Unfurled like a Benedictine cowl, an obese and pendulous gunmetal
Fig leaf, draped beneath the maidenhead of an impious sky.
a completely bank holiday mad dash through Copenhagen leaves me wishing there was more time; the city is beautiful, like Amsterdam only more capacious, more direct. Long sprawling avenues under low, lazy streetlights, caressed by swarms of cyclists guided by their very own miniature traffic signals. Herons carouse majestically over the many parks, rubbing feathers with wood pigeons and swans, that hiss like alabaster alley cats when you approach. Our foray precedes the queens annual procession through the city center, and though our spandex schedule can’t allow room for her august presence, soldiers pipe and snap along the route, anticipating. The train to hamburg is a restless human laden affair, people in the aisles and pressed against outer doors like rumbling barnacles, each repeated story of erupted lament aquires the sameness of receding waves scratching the sand. Same story as us. We cross into germany on the ferry, watching sunlight shimmer off the waves, like static on an old black and white television. Too pretty an afternoon for this choked train, for volcanic ash. A one hour layover in hamburg precipitates a run on mcdonalds, as we have not consumed since an ugly late night train snack; the German franchise has bagels, bless. I yearn to try the neighboring vittle venue, it’s logo being an extatic graphite pigs head in the act of smashing it’s way through the wall. No stretch sorting out what happened to the rest of him…The apex of our wounded trek via train through 4 countries in 24 hours looms a mere 20 minutes hence, I shiver in recollection of moses’ fate, sinking beneath the sand just breaths before Canaan. Then I remember I’m here for a big fetish party, god has bigger fish to fry and so, for that matter, does sand. I’d sink into a bed, between the pale flour of her thighs.
I meet christiane at the Stockholm central station at 10pm, and it appears our flight to Amsterdam is doomed due to icelands volcanic episode. Desperate to make the wasteland party on Saturday night, we commit to an adventure in trains, kayaks and dromedary, whatever the fuck gets us from here to there, trusting in a refund from air Baltic to at least defray the expense. We are astride our second train of the morning, toward Copenhagen and count dracula cannot be far behind… We shall make for the borgo pass, cutting the fiend off from his native earth that so, wait, I’m reciting keanu reeves; at best volcanic ash might coalesce into some demonic Finnish golem named Ed Walpole. The line for the ticket counter in Copenhagen coils like a giant python, and it’s 6am. We fail to get the direct train to Amsterdam, resulting in a 200 euro mission through 6 cities over 12 hours. No volcano raining ash on my party, bitch. Despite the face bleaching cost, the sheer adventure of the detour is exhilarating, and we have 4 hours to kill in Dane land.
totally shitfaced drunk at a bar in Stockholm, and christiane referring to Amelie, says:” she has nice boobs, boobs like mine. Good for fighting”We’ve been in Sweden for 3 days, and thanks to an unusual twist of fate involving a license revocation, I’m the proud driver of a souped up jaguar for the duration of my stay. What a way to learn the fine art of foreign road navigation, the swedes seem to err on the side of common sense over demonstrative signage. The roundabouts, like inscrutable tidepools, are particularly sticky to negotiate. I find that going really fast helps my concentration.
After a brief nap and a gauntlet run through wristwatch-peddling vendors (good price, real rolex!), we arrive hours early at the airport on yesterdays unpunched tickets. Italy is relaxed about most everything, particularly public transit and saturated fats, and you can get great mileage off a single purchase, especially if you look all doe eyed and foreign. And travel with pretty girls helps too, va bene. I get a baleful eye from customs as my passport is unstamped; why am I not stamped with entry to Italy? Because the Rome guy didn’t stamp me; I want a stamp! I just got a new, grafitti free virgin of a passport, stamp it! Clearing with a mere one exit stamp, albeit from Pisa, I mount the plane hoping for a peaceful transition through uk immigration, I have plenty more pages to spare. Still a bit jittery about uk customs, as they appear rather distrustful of the truth; that I have a bit of cash in the bank and am travelling for the sheer joy of it. I make it through unscathed, grateful for the officials cheery aplomb once I told him my purpose for the 3 week visit in Italy. Weeding. In a monastery no less. “do you plan to do any weeding during your stay in the UK?”.
the hostel, practically underneath the lean, gets top marks for nice, especially considering the 18 euro tab; just checked the bank balance and the hotel Doria in lerici ended up running 570 bucks for 3 days, pretty sure I’ll be good with lower budget digs from here on out…it’s grim up north, though. Definitely need to reprise at least part of this trip in less inclement weather. Visits to the museum dell’opera and the baptistry beneath the tower, the latter having demonstrably the most stunning acoustics I’ve ever heard. The museum was a bit lackluster, housing bit that fell off the cathedral, but they did have a small section of roman and Etruscan antiquities which make me happy. A long stroll along the river, until we find an ancient ruin converted to a playground containing a most feudal, towering spinning merrygoround, the best ever beheld. Much dizziness ensues, especially as I hold true to hugging the apex of the centrifugal force; the bar spanning the circumference of the beast. I almost hope to get thrown from my steed, lunch almost gets thrown from my guts. Lunch was a rather soupy lasagna at a tourist trap. I’m not proud to have patronized the place, but will be even less so should it geyser all over the pretty jungle gym.
And presented with a panorama of the city, even the smog seems to caress it’s precipices, like a ragged lover spat from the hosannas of tail pipes and cigarette ash. My illustrious descent is crowned by a great, seething cheese sandwitch from a nearby tavola, it’s shape a blunt slice of statuary, perhaps something chiselled off from zeus in a fever of pious zeal. Which turns my equally pious nap into a sustained slumber that eats the crusts of remaining day, and breaks briefly into a growling romp before succumbing.19th- even the hotel coffee is good in Rome, though it washes down my inadvertant sandwich of salami on glazed croissant. If tastebuds were mobile things, my mouth would be a desert right about now. But it’s free with the room so I obviously eat it, goaded by the thrown, chewy gurgles erupting from couples old as Vesuvius occupying every other table in the small space. A long and brilliant walk passing the Trevi fountain and quirinal, stops for ice cream, coffee and clementines, deposited amidst that great pile of debris; the colloseum.
This is an impromptu from my last shoot in LA, as I am now wuthering the hedgerows of jolly England for the next few months. Notice the strident moustachios, capably, earnestly supported by the dapper braces and half wainscotting of duds Heathen, my faultless five and diamond obsession.
This extended family allowed me the chance to photograph their yearly summer portrait, and such a delight it was. The crouton pudding was divine….
