D-D-D-Depeche Mode

To start (and this is really out of context, but I can't contain myself), there's an absynthe bar next door to this hostel from which I am blogging. 'Nuff said.

Back on topic though, when we head to Estonia in the next couple of weeks we'll be bunkering down in a city that's famous for...blah blah blah...I don't really give a shit. The important thing about Estonia is this:

It has a pub called Depeche Mode Baar.

I give, I don't care about any other part of Europe...all I want to do is fly straight to Estonia and spend a week getting polluted at Depeche Mode Baar. I know that you're probably reading this in silence, but SHUT UP FOR A SECOND...EVERY DRINK IN THIS BAR IS NAMED AFTER DEPECHE MODE SONGS AND...yes you guessed it...ALL THEY PLAY IS DEPECHE MODE!!!!!!!!!.

Canada is sooooooo gay compared to Depeche Mode Baar

*Angie and I fought over who got to blog about this...I let her take over for the actual experience blog...this is just a teaser.

Poland...wtf

So here we are...Poland. For some reason we deemed this to be the gateway to Eastern Europe and jumped the Extra-Foods coloured Ryanair jetline to get here. Granted it is a slight imporovement on the dreary dregs of England; where I realised that Wallace and Grommit was so accurate an approximation that visiting the place itself was almost superfluous.

Landing in Poland was at first beautiful (in no way un-aided by the bounty of super-model gorgeous women here) and then absolutely bloody terrifying. I won't go into much more detail as you will be able to read further on the landscape through Angie's blog.

Here's something that Angie skipped over though: Perogies.

Holy-good-goddamn, I don't understand how, in The Land of Starch & Delicious Lard these women manage to stay so fit. Granted the men seem to succumb to it once over the age of 25, but the women...goddamn.

Enough of this though. I'm going to go figure out how to operate a Karta Telephonyczana.

Reflections

I've spent the last few days in London pondering the value and purpose of travel. I think, now having sleepily meditated on the subject on the bus to Stansted, that travel is much like looking for love. Inasmuch, I find myself reflecting on past travels and what I discovered in them, I remember now that I started my career of travel by approaching places which I knew nothing of, and therein had no preconceived notions of. I used to leave the travel guides closed until I arrived.

But yes, travel is much like searching for love; you never really know where or with whom you will find it, yet you search. So, I keep launching myself from town to town, country to country in the hopes that I will discover something I love, something that will change me, add to me.

...

London is not one of these places.

SNAKBITE!

dear blogspopt
SNAKEBITE!
1/2 pint cider (maybe strongbow...i dunno)
1/2 pint ale (something nasty... india Pale Ale works)
1 shot creme de cassis
fit this magic into a pint glass (or 10) and swallow
=
you win!

Oct 28th ... Early ... GMT

In any other culture the man across from me would be revered as a god.

I watch him manage his meal, a morsel to him. His hands engulf it, and with the patience of the Old Testament's 7 days creation, he guilds plastic fork and plastic knife through roast beef.. I am brought to think of the mechanics of his joints; forged no doubt, in the depths of Gaia, herself. I picture these bones operating deep within as he stares down on the fat American a row ahead.

"Your decadence is the oil greasing the gears of poverty, " he booms, now casually munching on his under-seat life jacket.

He yawns, stretching like some colossal cat-deity and I stifle myself, nearly yelling, "stop!"; for a moment I feared the chance that, at 30 000" cruising altitude he had the opportunity to punch through the fuselage, the sky, the fabric of space and strangle the moon for so casually accepting the praise of so many pagan women. Perhaps he loins have grown restless. No herd of women could hope to sate his nethers.

But instead he reaches down, removes a leather bound book from below his seat and glides pen on paper in this journal the size of all my luggage for the next two years. Pages fly by. The header, "Day 20" has disappeared some hours ago. Left handed, he pours over these that will become the manuscripts of future worshippers.

Day 20, 11:15 ...
The Gospel of the Travelling Avatar.

End, Day 1

Working Fast

there's a count down counting out my last days here
it's clicking and notching it's way forward
stripping off the threads behind it
leaving only the shaky words,
"In the morning this will all be gone..."

and I tell you these as though it will be some bandage
over the wound left after the hook in your heart
pulls taught the string strung to my jetplane window
seat 18a, economy
with optional emergency exit back to you
should i so choose
to pull the latch
leave the oxygen mask
and jump

but my fears compound
and the ground that accommodates my
impact
smacks me back to reality
knowing that
were i revived
were the doctors to put the pieces of me back together
they'd find
when they put that stethoscope to my chest
nothing but static
just the crackle and fuzz
of a robot's heart gone wrong

like if the the tin man ate
the lion ate
the scarecrow
ate the mystery behind our fantasy
and left us wondering where we came from in the first place
with nowhere to go

just the crackle and fuzz and die
my bits splattered flat on the asphalt...

or

your whole heart pulled clean out of your ribcage...
this choice
I made,
and yeah it hurts
but you and i know damn well,
"In the morning this will all be gone..."

First Poem in a Year?

oh, these early morning people
bright eyed
unnaturally alert
we watch them walk
into the sunrise
which paints around them
that golden aura
oh, their edges glow
hot metal
molten still from the plasma torch
as though God just cut them
fresh from the block
and joints still stiff
one leg at least
in that frozen

sleepy

...rigamortis