makes for very pretty soup.

5am awake, fuck! I’ll go outside and witness the sun rise, glorious and respl..no, it’s pouring out. First shift of the day is chicken detail, releasing the wily beasts and capturing their unfertilized offspring, narrowly avoiding the cunningly laid offal traps these feathered crap machines produce in such abundance. After the cleaning chores, we wander off to explore Calvi, a beautiful hilltop medieval town 45 minutes down the road. Arrive there during siesta, thread our way through narrow overtly cobblestoned avenues and marvel at the sheer lack of humans. The rain drives us back home at a trot. Brittney the volunteer coordinator crouches in the lee of the laundry, girded with work detail that ought to keep us occupied till our apotheosis.

I wake at 5 am thanks to the fucking nap, and linger in bed for 2 hours before breakfast. This time I secure myself some goddamn dinner rolls moments before the germans clear them out. There is only hot cappuccino milk foam for the cereal. We retrieve our tickets to calvi, and search for smoothies in vain, before embarking on our journey to the countryside. Once you get 15 minutes out of Rome, the grafitti diminishes down lusty green and meadowy vistas. The farmhouse we are staying in for the next 3 weeks adjacent to the monastery, is out of a dream, astride a hilltop overlooking olive groves and figs. And table tennis. I lean out our window taking pictures before being pulled away for lunch. The nap is 3 hours this time but I’m up in time for dinner of homemade chicken soup, regaled by burning man stories by our hosts Betsy and christopher, before wine and steak. The heat is broken, so we take ourselves to bed thankful for a being to nestle against, because it’s fucking cold in here.

I wake at 7am and push myself past the long sense memories of gorgeous sex, of someone banging on the wall, of less than good pizza eaten in bed, an interlude. The breakfast room is crowded with a choirfull of German tourists, who appear to have scarfed all the bread. We tumble easily towards the Vatican, passing the colloseum and trevi fountain, both on our left hand side (for once) and stop for ice cream beside the pantheon. Finally onward to the sistene chapel, which is monumentally more impressive than expected, the characters exude from the ceiling, escape artists one musical key away from pouring onto the crowd below. I would love some drugs.  A particularly insidious fart as we exit, which echoes like an angels trumpet. The museum has so many busts, it looks more like a shop display, and 3 of the amazingly intact full body statues actually still have their bronze weapons in hand, something I’ve not witnessed in any other museum; it’s like the Vatican handed out to other institutions all the crumbly tat they couldn’t find a hall for. We return to nap, and 4 hours later emerge for a lovely dinner in a taverna with a British flag outside. The lasagna was heavenly and bilingual.

The soaring phallus that is British air got me into heathrow over an hour late, just in time to thwart my connecting flight to Rome, my connecting digits to christianes extremeties. Sitting right next to the wing, I was one of the fortunates poised to witness a bonafide lightning bolt hit the plane. My bursting enthusiasm for the girl must bide it’s time until Rome now, but fear not, for I have a whole 5 pound voucher to atone for the hassle, and that’s enough for porn.Track forward 5 minutes; the airport bookstore is bereft of porn, what happened to the permissive Europe I so cherish? Lickily, luckily the smoked salmon sandwich at pret a manger sliced diagonally looks and smells enough like a vagina to keep hope alive. And since there are 2 halves, that tantamount to threeway action. Hold the cream cheese, I’ll churn some of my own.I feel like weeping when I see her for the first time, resting against a pillar in the less than first world airport. We pass the turn towards the train, just as we did on our initial Rome adventure, and riding the escalator pressed together, I realize the customs official never stamped my passport. I am not here.

Bloody brilliant shoot of the immaculate Neil Gaiman and the silent but deadly Amanda Palmer, in New York for the eagerly anticipated Coihouse Magazine.  Both a treat, both so talented, I felt like a girl in petticoats kneeling before royalty.