The Road to Nowhere: Saving Babies (A European Journey)

Preface -

On May 26th, 2007 I went to Europe. When June 22nd made its debut about a month later I pulled myself up off the thinly carpeted floor of an alcove in Aéroport Lyon-Saint Exupéry, and began the slow journey back to Rhode Island. A month on another continent seems somewhat daunting if you haven't done it before, but looking back on it, its almost like it never happened. These are the people who came across the Atlantic with me, for various periods of time during my journey. If you were a Bokononist you might say that these people were part of my granfalloon, the sort of intentional, purpose-driven assemblage of people that attempts to do the will of the Universe without understanding the laws of its design. This is in contrast to my karass, a disparate group of people brought together by the motion of the universe to further its ultimate purpose. A granfalloon is essentially a false karass, an attempt by man to control that which is not his to control.

Principal Actors:
Adam (Me)
Nate
Charles

Supporting Actors:
Maarten
Robbie

Additional Cast:
Ty
Becky
Meghan
Jon
Julie
Megan
Rachel


This is a list of the people I met along the way, in one form or another, in no particular order, but tending towards the chronological. You might say they were members of my karass…

* The guys from North Carolina that were in an acapella group
* Phillip, Michael, and Daniel from Cologne, Germany - My Taize roommates
* Timo the Finn
* Volod, Hanna, Taras, and Iryna from the Ukraine, and Johannes from Freyburg
* Brother John, originally from Phillly. A brother at Taize.
* The California kids, Dan and Jeanette
* Mareike at Oyak
* The waiter at L'Est in Lyon
* My friend Anna in Stuttgart
* Anna's friends Karoline, Andra, and Sophie
* Killian, Roisin, and Ciaran from Ireland, Sylvestre from Berlin
* The Gypsy rock band 'Grams'
* The two Swedish guys Andreas and Robert
* Kim, Ryan, Ron, and Andy - the Australians
* Rajiv
* The people at the bar in Prague whose names I don’t know
* The Asian girl and the German man in our sleeper car
* Justin & Jeremy from California
* Pastor Mark from Humbolt
* The Indonesian/German/Floridian lady at the Ice Cave
* Joe from The Elf & Yoho
* Ken from Singapore & Andrew from Detroit
* Barbara & Magdelena (and Barbara's sister)
* The British lady in the square in Salzburg
* The baby Nate saved and its grateful mother. Also, the guy that cheered for us.
* The obnoxious girls from California on the night train to Paris
* The funny ladies from Louisiana on the same train
* Kimya Dawson in Amsterdam
* The two Welsh kids that were going to Cassis
* The girl with good taste in music on the way back to Lyon
* The cab driver that took us to the airport in Lyon after the buses stopped running

There were others, and some will likely appear in my story. Some of the people above may not be so (un)fortunate.

Here is a map that I marked up with where we went…






Part I -

There was a lack of foresight from the very beginning. I found myself on a Peter Pan bus, sitting between Nate and Charles. The lack of foresight was apparent because rather than sitting in any normal set of seats, we chose to sit together in the only seats where we could sit three across - in the back. The back of the bus might seem like a good choice for reasons that would resonate with a pretentious teenager: (1) you don't have to be surrounded by strangers, (2) you can sit next to BOTH of your friends, rather than one, and (3) of course everyone knows the cool kids sit in the back. Unbeknownst to us there are reasons you don't want to sit in the back of the bus: (1) its next to the bathroom, (2) the seats don't recline, and (3) the air compressor located directly behind your head is deafening.

Lesson learned.

The Peter Pan bus was departing the bus terminal situated on Route 95 just north of Providence, RI. It was heading to Logan International Airport. It was our intention to get on an airplane at Logan, sit on that plane for seven or eight hours, and then disembark at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. From there we would repeat the dreadful process en route to Taize, France. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As said, Nate, Charles and I were sitting in the back of the bus. I would spend every day with them for the next month. As I write this I'm beginning to realize the enormity of the task ahead of me, because you don't know Nate and Charles. I feel some sort of obligation to introduce them in a formal manner, because I’m always annoyed when I find myself in a room with a stranger who shares a mutual friend and that friend doesn’t have the courtesy to introduce the stranger.

I've known Charles since we were 5 years old. We were in the same kindergarten class at Hampden Meadows Elementary School. If you stepped outside my suburban, ranch-style home that is currently a bluish-grey color, with a maroon front door, but at the time Charles and I were in kindergarten was a pale green color with a front door that I can't really recall, and you walked past my neighbor's house on the right, which back then was Henrietta's house but is now Beth's parents' house (Beth lived there after Henrietta) because Beth and her parents swapped houses when she adopted her second child from China, you'd be at the corner of Greenwood Ave (my street) and Martin Ave (Charles' street). If you took a left there and walked past 3 houses, and then looked to your right, you would be staring at Charles' house. Aside from my family, Charles is one of the only people that I currently know whom I can't remember not knowing, that I can't remember meeting, and certainly the only ‘friend’ that falls into that classification. I'm not sure what that means, but I know that I could fill this book with so much background on Charles that it'd make you hate both of us.

Seventeen years is a long time to know a person. In those seventeen years, these are the things that I've come to realize are most important about Charles and my friendship with him. I will always be friends with Charles because the laws of the universe have dictated that it be so since my conscious life began. I’ve ceased my contemplation of struggle against those forces. I'm 6'0", Charles is slightly shorter than me, I think. Maybe by as little as an inch, but possibly an inch or two more than that. Charles is rather smart, with a knack for things that tend toward the scientific and musical. He's probably smarter than you, and even if he's not, he'd probably trick you into thinking he was, so you could say he’s clever as well. He was going to study physics at the University of Rhode Island, but then he wised up and went to Full Sail College in Orlando where he earned an associates degree in Sound Recording. He plays bass and guitar and he's got a great ear for music. He's direct, to the point of being an asshole. He's also highly sociable and I know a lot of people who aren't as close friends with him as I am, and they say 'oh I love Charles'. I love Charles too, but I'd never say it like that, because sometimes I want to slap him. Saying it like that merely shows that you don't know that person well enough to occasionally hate them. Charles is hung like a horse. His mom said he takes after his dad. No joke. He was the only one of us that wouldn’t save a baby from its doom during the course of the trip.

If Charles is my metaphorical 'right hand man', which I assure you, he's not, then Nate would be the back of my left hand. I've got three circular scars there, right below the knuckles, spaced just right so that it might look like I could potentially sport claws in the same fashion as Wolverine of Marvel Comics fame, but that’s not the case. I just had a real bad fall on my skateboard once. Nate is my closest friend who I know the least about. I'm not even sure when I started to know Nate, I think it was sophomore year of high school. I know Nate because Charles knows Nate (I told you Charles was sociable). Nate is taller than me, probably two inches taller. He has scraggly blonde hair, a contrast to Charles' shorter, brown hair. He's got childbearing hips. Nate also dresses the most absurdly by conventional standards, which really means he wastes less time and money than most people in assembling his wardrobe. I think more than anything Nate enjoys keeping people on their toes, if only for his own amusement. He liked to steal things when he was younger, but he doesn't really do that anymore that I know of. He might just be a rather exceptional thief now...

Nate, Charles, and I were bound for Europe, but we were not alone. There was a point at the end of the journey where we were alone, but until that point we were accompanied by eight people, two people, and finally one person from our side of the Atlantic. The person leading the initial group of eleven was Ty Creason, who warrants a book unto to himself. Ty was raised in rural Arkansas, spent at least ten years as a college student, played Dungeons and Dragons in Los Angeles with Gary Gygax, spent a couple of years as a monk, and now works as the assistant to the Episcopal Bishop of Rhode Island. Ty organizes a trip to Taize every year for college-aged kids. He has shoulder length, thinning grey hair. He rocks a graying beard. If you can't carry a conversation with Ty, you're hopeless, because through God's divine grace, Ty seems to be able to get along with everyone.

As I sat inside the poorly air-conditioned, green-trimmed bus along with Nate, Charles, and Ty. But there others. There was Maarten, who warrants some text as well. Roelof Maarten Hoogeboom has a very Dutch name. He's also taller than I am. He has thinning brown hair, which is usually covered by a Red Sox baseball cap. I worked with Maarten at God camp, where we did things that people wouldn't normally associate with God camp, but that I don't think God would particularly condemn. Since I don't have a younger brother (I have a younger sister), I imagine Maarten is the closest thing I might have to a younger brother. He's very eager. People's moms really like him. He's kind of a goofball.

The other people on the bus were as follows... Becky: I call her Becky Binns, but she got married two years ago and I really should get in the habit of calling her Becky Gettel. But it doesn't flow. Becky is shorter than I am, as most girls are. She is one of the most thoughtful and peaceful people that I know. Thoughtful doesn't mean that she's always giving presents, though I'm not saying she doesn't. I just want to differentiate between the self-centered perception of 'thoughtful' and the proper definition, which I would venture to guess is something like 'full of thought'. Becky doesn't half-ass the things she says, and I like that about her.

Then there was Meghan and Jon. They're about Becky's age, meaning Jon is three years older than me, and Becky and Meghan are a few years older than that. Meghan and Jon got married just before we left for Taize. Just after we returned Meghan was ordained as an Episcopal minister. She’s very intense. If you didn't know Jon was married, you'd probably mistake him for a flaming homosexual. You might make that mistake even if you knew he was married. He's a great artist who can work well with more mediums than anyone I know.

A list of the rest of the people on the trip will probably drive you to stop reading this, and me to stop writing this. They'll be introduced as I find necessary, which may mean not at all. Time will tell.

We passed the hour-long bus ride by dangling my miniature iPod speakers over the railing of the storage shelf above our heads and doing out best to hear the tunes over the din of the air compressor droning on relentlessly behind us. I had drunkenly convinced our friend Pete to allow me to borrow the speakers for our trip the previous night at Justine's beach house. The speakers consisted of a round plastic sphere that opened up to reveal a small speaker in each half of the orb. We had been using them on the porch that night, until a South Kingstown police officer came to inform us of a noise complaint against us. We all, including the officer, had a good laugh when he saw how inadequate our sound equipment was. He wished us a good evening and didn't even hassle us about our drinking, which was illegal for roughly half of us.

We arrived outside Logan, climbed off the bus, and dragged our luggage out from the storage compartments that we had been riding on top of for the past hour. My luggage consisted of my 4,000 cubic-inched, green and white North Face backpack. I hated that it was as big as it was. If my bag had been smaller, I would have packed lighter, I told myself. I was disappointed in my packing. If only I had packed ahead of time, I could have cut it down, I told myself. Charles’ backpack was a bit smaller. I envied his backpack. But he also sported a thin, navy blue nylon tote bag that could be folded up into itself. He used it as his carry-on. It looked like the kind of bag you’d put a bomb in and leave under the seat of a busy airplane terminal.

Even more than Charles’ bag, I wanted Nate’s bag. His bag actually belonged to Pete, but Pete had left it in Nate’s dorm room at Marlboro College years ago. Many people had made it their own since then. Pete was not one of those people. The bag was Nate’s for now, and it was a beautiful size, just a large, black daypack, with enough straps and loops to attach the bulkier items to the outside. I felt like a tourist with too much luggage that deserved to have their passport stolen by a clever Italian thief. I had a copy of my passport buried at the bottom of my too-big backpack for just such an occurrence. Its probably still in there.

The 1pm bus got us to Logan much too early for our 5pm flight, but the 3pm bus was cutting it too close. When we arrived the terminal was a ghost town. The room felt like an excessive metal and glass temple built to some non-existent God, designed merely to make those within it feel small. Without must haste Nate, Charles, and I proceeded to the counter to have our bags checked. The woman speaking broken English at the counter put the wrong tags on the bags. I got Charles’ bag. I still wanted Nate’s bag.

I had transferred some essentials to a green messenger bag for use as my carry-on luggage. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, which I struggled through most of the trip, and The Old Man in the Sea by Hemmingway, my maroon, spiral-bound notebook that sported the spiral binding along top, rather than the side, my iPod and Pete’s inadequate speakers, travel documents, several granola bars, and my toothbrush and toothpaste. I felt the need to brush my teeth every couple of hours on long flights. The time change, coupled with my propensity for consciousness while being rocketed over the ocean in a metal tube with a couple hundred strangers, always left me with that dried-out corpse feeling that one inevitably obtains when spending too little time with your eyes open and not enough with them closed. I would shuffle to the bathroom in the back of the plane when I saw that the bathroom was vacant, slide into the two square feet of space, and manage the bi-fold closed so that I could brush the sweaters off my teeth, splash the artificial plane water on my face, and wipe my armpits with a couple of wet-naps in blissful solitude for two minutes. After staring at my increasingly bleary eyes in the mirror for a few moments, I would return to my seat and watch another crappy movie offered by the 4” monitor that grew out of the back of the skull of the person seated in front of me and protruded through their headrest for my viewing pleasure.

We passed through security at Logan without any hassle. I always wondered how little I could bother to remove from my person and still go through the metal detector without setting off any alarms. I’ve found that my cross, which was crafted from two old iron nails soldered together, never gets anyone’s attention. Neither do the screws holding parts of my left wrist together. Apparently the Bic lighter that I forgot was inside my cigarette pack did not concern them either.

After 20 minutes inside the ‘secure’ portion of the terminal, where they sell whiskey and cigarettes at prices that could get them placed on a ‘value meal’ menu, we realized we couldn’t smoke a cigarette anywhere. I bitched and moaned and even tried to sell the idea of smoking in the bathroom like a bunch of delinquent high-schoolers, but in the end we took the reasonable course of action and exited to where we had been dropped off by the big, green Peter Pan bus. I smoked two of my Turkish Golds, which took only slightly longer than it took Nate to smoke his one American Spirit. It would be a while before we could light up again. I wished it was the 1970’s and that I could fill our 747’s cabin with hundreds of cubic feet worth of my second-hand smoke. My fantasy was interrupted as we passed back through security, and my wrist screws, cross, and Bic lighter still didn’t set the metal detector off.

We killed the remaining hours that stood between the present and our departure by eating dinner in one of the airport restaurants. O’Houligan’s was a cookie-cutter mockery of an Irish pub, decked out with cheap, dark wood accents and a dimly lit bar. Any attempt at an authentic atmosphere was ruined for me not by the crowds of baggage-laden travelers scrambling through the terminal just outside the restaurant, but by the plastic knives that accompanied our otherwise-normal set of silverware. I could probably pull off a hijacking with this if I really wanted to, I thought to myself. I ordered the French Dip, and as I assaulted the thinly-sliced roast beef and cheese wrapped in a rapidly disintegrating roll between pints of Miller Lite dressed up in Guinness Pint glasses, I realized that I had eaten the same thing, in the same place, the year before when I had made the same trip to France. Matt, Erin, and Ty had been transformed into Charles, Nate, and Maarten, and the French Dip had stayed exactly the same.

As we waited for Northwest Flight 38 bound for Amsterdam to arrive at the gate, I contemplated whether or not the first week of this trip was worth taking. I had been to Taize the year before, at the same time, with many of the same people. I didn’t realize it then, but I was upset that Matt and Erin were not there this year. They had been spiritual mentors to me for years as we had all been involved in an abundance of Episcopal youth groups, retreats, and events. I suppose this trip partially fell under that guise as well.

Ty led the same trip to Taize every year at this time of year, which was late May. It was the second year in a row I was making the trip. It was the first time for Maarten, Charles, and Nate. Taize was, and is, a monastic community that was started by Brother Roger, the son of a Swiss Calvinist minister, prior to World War II. When the Germans invaded France and Taize eventually found itself in occupied territory, Brother Roger returned to Geneva with a few brothers and waited out the war. When it was over he returned to that rural hilltop in southwest France and began a brotherhood that now includes Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians from over twenty different countries. Over the decades Taize began attracting pilgrims, mostly young backpackers seeking a place to rest. Now it receives hundreds, even thousands, of visitors each week, from all over the globe. Most are between the ages of 18 and 30, and the brothers accept them all, and allow them a glimpse of the monastic life, and somehow, their routine seems little phased by it.

I napped on a padded row of seats near our gate as Jon, Meghan, Becky and Charles played the ‘travel’ edition of Scrabble that Meghan seemed to adore. I had never played scrabble and was not interested in picking up the habit. The personal side of my eyelids was more interesting to me at that point. I knew I would not sleep on the plane.

We boarded our flight and my initial disappointment at not having a window seat was assuaged by the fact that I had an aisle seat in the middle section of the Boeing 747. With the aisle to my left, and Maarten two seats to my right, I wondered what unwelcome stranger would fill the space that I wished would remain empty between us. It turned out that no one was meant to fill the space, so Maarten and I had the luxury of storing our carry-on items within easy reach, and using the monitor belonging to the empty seat to constantly keep track of the plane’s progress towards Amsterdam with the small, digital map that alternated between a depiction of a tiny, white plane slowly progressing over the Atlantic, and constantly changing data concerning our speed, wind speed, time of arrival, and the local times at our point of departure and arrival. Time does not exist when you are thousands of feet above a dark blue ocean that continues thousands of feet further downward to the largest mountain range in the world that few people realize is even there. We were in a frozen, metal time bubble, defying the laws of nature with a plethora of our fellow plebian time travelers, while uniformed attendants doled out the 21st century’s version of Juvenal’s bread, and our personal entertainment monitors provided the circus. I was sure that first class tickets must have come with the luxurious option of being cryogenically frozen. I wanted to mutiny.

Our time-defying journey, which began at 7:10pm in Boston, and was scheduled to end at 8:10am in Amsterdam, with only 7 hours of time in the air, ended up taking closer to 8 real hours and 12 in fake, paper time. By the time we touched down at Schiphol Airport we had less than half an hour to exit our plane and sprint from terminal (the Dutch called them ‘piers’) B to terminal D, which were much farther apart than the designations ‘B’ and ‘D’ would lead you to believe.

After impatiently waiting for the people in first class to be unfrozen and led out of the plane, those of us in coach finally were able to exit. We ran. All eleven of us. It was a sad scene. My right knee ached with the dull soreness that running in worn-down flip-flops will cause you when you have annihilated most of your cartilage in that joint by playing Ultimate frisbee for the past 4 years of college. We ran down corridors, sometimes the wrong ones, and along people-mover conveyor belts that were rendered nearly irrelevant by the fact that people do not move while they are actually on them. Carry-on luggage made of cheap, ripstop nylon fabric slapped against our collective backs and sides as we desperately maneuvered through an infinite crowd of indifferent travelers.



We eventually found our way to Terminal D and had the unfortunate luck of having our gate located at the far end of the terminal. We continued our frenzied dash, taking some solace in the fact that many of our time travel companions from the previous flight also had to make this connecting flight to Lyon. KLM knew this as well. I was one of the first to arrive at the gate, and my heart immediately sank into my stomach as I realized there was no plane at the gate. Ty came bustling up behind me, hardly out of breath, with a confident and carefree air about him. “Oh good, we made it” he remarked and proceeded to step up to the check-in desk. I gave him a puzzled look but then noticed the large airport bus located right outside the door to our gate. Apparently we had to be bussed across the damp, misty tarmac to our waiting 737, which had been notified of the late arrival of many of its passengers on this dreary Dutch morning.

I boarded waiting shuttle after handing my boarding pass to the girl at the KLM counter who returned the gesture with a knowing smile and no words. I squeezed onto the already-packed, doublewide shuttle and held onto a grab-bar mounted to the ceiling. Trendy looking, 30-something Europeans surrounded me. I felt haggard and out of place. My knee ached from running through the airport, and I knew that while our next flight would be much shorter then the previous, I knew it would be much more miserable.

As I waited in the shuttle the rest of my group slowly filed in, filling in the less-than-adequate spaces between the already-present passengers. I was feeling a tinge of guilt for being the last group on the bus, and thus the reason for everyone else’s delay. At least I can’t understand their pissed-off remarks, I thought to myself. Besides English, I knew a very basic amount of Spanish that was really only adequate for finding the location of the bathroom, exchanging pleasantries, and ordering breakfast. I could feel the weight of my fellow passenger’s collective pride at the knowledge they were far more accomplished communicators than I. Their intellect embarrassed me and encouraged me to blame our sub-standard school system for my own failings to progress through the increasing levels of Spanish instruction. I had started taking Spanish in 7th grade, and progressed to an intermediate level by my senior year of college – not a very astounding feat. I would later be told by Philip, one of my German roommates at Taize, that Germans now began English instruction at age six. “Its almost as if we have no mother tongue now,” he remarked. I wished I went to kindergarten in Germany.

I was snapped out of my educational self-loathing by noticing that Ty had exited the shuttle to go back to the KLM desk. I watched through two layers of glass as he spoke to the woman at the desk while Maarten and the second Meghan with us stood next to him, the last remaining members of our group that had yet to board the bus. After a few moments Ty returned to the bus, and in his typical fashion shrugged off what would cause many people great anxiety, as a minor complication. Maarten and Meghan would not be joining us on our flight because they had not printed out their boarding passes prior to our arrival at Schiphol, and by that time it was too late, even for the woman at the KLM desk, to obtain them. I laughed at their misfortune, but was incredulous at the fact that I was standing there, observing them through the glass window of the shuttle, a shuttle which they could very easily board in physical terms. Yet our ill-conceived system of human rules and regulations had routed the prospect of the rationally and physically possible. Maarten and Meghan would arrive in Lyon late – just like our luggage.

Maarten waved goodbye through the glass window of the airport terminal with a wide, resilient smile pasted across his face. Meghan looked much more concerned, as her methodical and organized nature was apt to make her. I imagined that Maarten would nap on the black leather terminal seats while Meghan worried and waited for their substitute flight to depart. I learned later that I was mostly correct.

Our flight aboard a Boeing 737 to Lyon, France was less than two hours long, but I hated those two hours. I was beginning to feel rather acutely the lack of sleep I had gotten during the course of our overnight time travel. My skin felt dry, my lips chapped, and my brain fuzzy with the remnants of too much airplane wine and not enough nicotine. I sat three across on the right side of the plane with Nate and Charles. I got the window seat that I wanted so badly to relish, but which I found merely forced me to crane my neck to the left as I tried to lean against the side of the plane to rest my head and close my eyes. The morning sun streamed in through the window and penetrated my eyelids with blinding fury, angry that I was in no condition to appreciate them. I forced myself into a light, fitful sleep, interrupted by announcements over the cabin intercom and stewardesses’ offerings of artificial food that they grew in the belly of the plane.

We touched down uneventfully at Aéroport Lyon-Saint Exupéry, and very expediently exited to the main lobby and purchased bus tickets into Lyon proper, where we would board our train to the village of Macon. Ty had decided to stay behind at the airport upon getting word that Meghan and Maarten would soon be boarding their flight to Lyon, along with our baggage. I thought about how pleasant it was to be accorded a group of sherpas for my oversized bag. At least I wouldn’t have to be seen with it while journeying to Taize.

The remaining eight of us now deferred to Becky for group leadership. She too had been to Taize before, though it was some years earlier. Julie, another of the girls in our group, and myself remembered the procedure quite vividly from the previous year, and between the three of us we managed to see ourselves delivered to Lyon Part Deux, the train station where we would depart for Macon, the closest stop via rail to Taize.

As we exited the bus and sauntered across the busy square that prefaced the train station, images of Lyon flooded back into my memory. We had spent two days there following our week in Taize the year earlier, in order to ‘decompress’, as Ty put it. This basically meant getting dinner at the nicest restaurant where Ty could get away with putting the bill on the Diocesan credit card. I remember quite clearly being close to tears of joy as I consumed that meal the year prior. Feasting upon four courses, including the sweetest tasting sausage bread that, while odd looking, literally melted in your mouth, and a raspberry tart dessert that concluded the meal with something of an edible exclamation point, was such a drastic change from the spartan Taize menu that I could barely contain my joy. Having a private second story room with a balcony that overlooked the street below was enough to overcome my constantly fleeting sense of discipline as I indulged in one of Ty’s cigarettes only a few weeks after I had ‘quit’. It was not the first, nor last, time I made the attempt. Topping off the evening with an average table wine that was far superior to anything my naïve tastebuds had encountered, and a coffee that I had no desire to sweeten or dilute with sugar or milk made my first impression of Lyon a very unique and memorable conglomerate of physical indulgence, mental contentment, and spiritual relaxation.

My first week at Taize the year before had been one characterized by blissful exhaustion, and that meal in Lyon had been the culmination of the week’s journey. I felt full in every aspect of the word, and the distinctions between physical, mental and spiritual became blurred to the point that those distinctions ceased to exist. I felt whole. Thursday evening I had been broken, I had literally shattered my being on the floor of the church at Taize, leaving God to pick up the pieces and in one of my rarer moments, fully trusting that he would. I had emptied myself in a way that I had never done before, and that night I felt the contentment of being empty, and of being broken. Then just four days later in that restaurant, L’Nord, I had refit the experiences of my life into a new design, and the contentment I felt from this fullness echoed the joy that I felt from being empty, and I realized then that these two extremes were not linear, but circular, and thus not extremes at all.

And so, as we proceeded into Lyon Part Deux to board our train, I hoped again that I was in a place to empty myself and rebuild my experiences into an even newer design that I could once again fill to capacity with provocative thought and gourmet French food. I hoped this against my all-knowing logic that I could not, and would not recreate my experiences from the year before. I struggled to burst my balloon of hope with the sharp edge of logic and instead replace it with the knowledge that I had come to Taize the year previously with no expectations, and without that mindset I would undoubtedly be disappointed this year. I decided that I wanted to procure the same feelings through new experiences, and I wondered if that were even possible.

Consciousness overwhelmed my thoughts only when I found that our bus from Macon was now taking a right hand turn, heading up a steep, winding road surrounded on all sides by the rolling hills that countless French farms called home. To my right and left were the same passive, albino cows that watched me take my countryside walks the year before. The coach bus groaned as it climbed the hill towards the clustering of ancient clay-colored brick buildings that made up the village of Taize, passing a handful of cyclists being slowly propelled by their quadriceps towards the same destination. It was late afternoon and we had finally reached Taize after nearly 32 hours of timeless travel. My mind raced with anxious thoughts. My stomach groaned with hunger. I prayed that they would be serving mashed potatoes that night.

Review: The Darjeeling Limited

Trying to write a review of a movie you saw a week ago is a considerable burden upon the memory banks. I need to see this film again. Until that time, here's what I've got so far:

The most interesting thing about the film for me was not the film itself, but rather the totally inconsistent reviews it received. People loved it, people hated it, people were apathetic about it. Go ahead, check out the reviews. This obviously says that Wes Anderson's latest work is going to be a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So be it. I would say everyone needs to see it to make up their own mind.

The film is about three brothers, played by Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, and Owen Wilson, trying to rekindle their relationship after not speaking to each since their father's funeral over a year ago. The three have an obvious chemistry, with Wilson fitting well into the role of the overzealous, controlling older brother, Schwartzman playing the forlorn youngest brother, and Brody (who was my personal favorite and a welcome addition to Anderson's otherwise repetitive cast) as the middle sibling coming to grips with the life he has made for himself.

I intend to review the movie based on analyzing each of the three brothers, which I shall insert

HERE

when I have a bit more time to really contemplate each character a little more.

Some other points on the movie:

• Anderson is much more direct in addressing most of his themes in this film than in some of his previous works. He's still addressing a variety of the dysfunctional family issues that he often delves into, but I thought he did a decent job of addressing different themes through each of the brothers.
  
• In keeping with the rather blunt style of the film, there are several 'slap-in-the-face' metaphors, such as Brody losing the child in the river, Wilson's removal of his facial bandages, and the incredibly blatant dropping of the luggage as they run to catch their train at the end of the film. While some of these may have been a little too contrived, I thought they worked well within the film, and appreciated Anderson's attempt to 'keep it simple', if you will.
  
• The soundtrack, of course, if phenomenal. Great use of The Kinks 'Powerman', 'Strangers', and 'This Time Tomorrow'. His blatant placement of Schwartzman's old-school iPod was interesting, and the repetitive use of Peter Sarstedt's 'Where Do You Go To' during Schwartzman's attempted romantic encounters was both funny and a bit heart-wrenching due to his obvious desperation.
  
• I've read a couple of reviews where people complained that Anderson merely used India as a backdrop and didn't truly appreciate the country, blah, blah, blah... I think those people completely missed the boat here. So many Westerners view India as some sort of mythical, spiritual land. They visit various temples, interact with the 'locals', and think they're finding themselves. I thought Anderson's setting was a bit of commentary on these kind of folks who think they're going to 'find' themselves due to their geographic location, and I think the plot really reflected this.
  
• Not that I can really think of a place to fit him, but I love Bill Murray so much, his brief cameo was just a painful tease.
  

Based on one viewing, I'd say this was a better performance for Anderson than The Life Aquatic, and it certainly seems more mature, but I'm not sure if I'm comfortable saying it topped Rushmore or The Royal Tenebaums. Not yet anyways. Another viewing is certainly in order, as it always should be.

Review: Cat's Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut is fast becoming my favorite novelist. His ability to tackle the broadest of themes, yet address them on a very human and personal level is uncanny. Personally, I really appreciated his invented Bokononist terms karass, referring to a group of people that, knowingly or unknowingly, are working together towards some predestined achievement, and granfalloon, essentially a false karass, a group that people imagine they belong to but that is devoid of real meaning or purpose. Vonnegut uses the example of 'Hoosiers' in the novel, hinting towards the larger characterization of all 'nations' as being granfalloons. We invent these groups to feel wanted, needed, or part of something larger than ourselves. In our quest to create this fantasy for ourselves, Vonnegut points out, we often miss the truth that is staring us in the face.

He uses the island society of San Lorenzo as a stage for his commentary on the destructive power of both science and religion. Using Ice Nine to portray the cold, destructive power of science, he contrasts this with the religion of Bokononism, whose text's opening sentence is, "All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies." Bokononism displays Vonnegut's belief that while religion may not save from destruction, it can make the road to oblivion that much more enjoyable, until the tornadoes come.

From the pages whose corners I folded over during the course of reading:

Fold 1/Page 15 - "They won't fight unless you keep shaking the jar." Newt Hoenikker referring to how the bug fights that his brother Frank staged inside glass jars distracted him from the terror his father caused him. I thought this said a lot about the nationalistic, prejudicial conflicts that our society engages in to distract us from the real dangers, such as those posed by the weaponization of science.

Fold 3/Page 63 - "As Bokonon says: 'Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.'" Pretty self-explanatory. If your karass is illogical and ignores religious, nationalistic, and other man-made boundaries, it must also defy geography.

Fold 4/Page 92 - "Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows - and any nation, anytime, anywhere." So when I said that Vonnegut 'hints' at nations being granfalloons earlier, I was making a gross understatement.

Fold 6/Page 101 - "Pay no attention to Ceasar. Ceasar doesn't have the slightest idea what's really going on." Bokonon's paraphrase of Jesus' suggestion, "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's."

Fold 7/Page 190 - "I rolled out of bed at the first bang and ran to the heart of the house with the brainless ecstasy of a volunteer fireman." I just really liked the imagery. It made me laugh out loud.

Fold 8/Page 198 - "Maturity, the way I understand it, is knowing what your limitations are" says Frank Hoenikker. "Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything" says Bokonon. I would say that knowing your limitations must be a bitter disappointment. I intend to avoid maturity at all times.


I other folds seemed irrelevant upon further review. There were probably many pages that should have received folds, but sometimes I read when I'm high.

How 'Bout Them Apples?: Eat Your Wheaties

Boston sports is absolutely filthy right now. Every household in New England, drunk on Sam Adams, overstuffed with wings and chowdah, and high on an imaginary sense personal athletic glory, sat down to toss 'Boondock Saints' or 'The Depahted' into the DVD player following game 4 last night, confident in the fact that 'we earned this'. We've done nothing of the sort, I assure you. There is little need to justify our overzealous enthusiasm for our local teams to each other, but we do it anyways, because we don't want to feel like a bunch of Yankees or Cowboys fans. Fuck that.

We are going to be far and away the most despised sports fans in the country by January (just wait until the Celtics start filling NBA body bags with their opponents corpses). No human being raised outside New England will be able to withstand the verbal onslaught when some drunken mick starts ranting about the Patriots, the Red Sox, the Celtics, and lets throw BC in there too for good measure. The key to being the most obnoxious sports fans is continue our attempts to differentiate our teams from past dynasties, by labeling their exploits as destiny, by thinking 'we've earned it' or that 'this team is something special'. Of course the Patriots are special, they just made Joe Gibbs look like a monkey trying to solve a rubix cube! I think we New Englanders can take the role of obnoxious sports fan to a whole new level. We can be more than obnoxious, we can be pretentious, what with our enviable fall foliage, quaint towns, and progressive demographic. It won't be safe for anyone to cross that border into New York before long, we'll be so despised.

One last note. With the current field of Presidential candidates looking as worthless as, to paraphrase Jay-Z, a knife in a gunfight, I'm proposing we actually elect some winners to office. I'm voting Bellichick/Francona next November. Could you imagine the press conferences? The White House press corps would all kill themselves after 2 days of Bellichick. Take this tidbit from after the Washington game for instance:

"Q: At 38-0 you went for it on 4th down, on 45-0 you went for it on 4th down. What was the philosophy there?

BB: What do you want us to do, kick a field goal?

Q: I didn’t want you to do anything. I’m just asking what the philosophy is.

BB: It’s 38-0. It’s fourth down. [We’re] just out there playing. [We’re] just out there playing."

The man is a public relations genius. Or nightmare depending on how anxious you are. I would watch C-SPAN every goddamned day to see Bill tell reporters to go fuck themselves, in not so many words.

"Q: The recent altercation with Iran is being deemed an overreaction on the part of the U.S. military, and the Secretary General of the UN is calling your administration irresponsible and trigger happy. Do you have any comment on these accusations?

BB: No, I don't. I gave Generals Brady and Ortiz the authorization to execute a winning plan. They did just that.

Q: But don't you think that excessive force may have been used?

BB: What do you want us to do, sanction them some more? Me and Terry here are in it to win. You see these rings? [Holds up both hands, and the stuffed, severed hand of Eric Mangini that hangs from a gold chain around his neck, housing Superbowl rings 11-14] I've got more Superbowl rings than fingers dammit! You can bet Ahmadinejad wishes he had these rings, but he's not getting them, because he's now buried under a pile of rubble that used to be Tehran.

Q: Wildfires are ravaging parts of California, threatening crops of oranges. Will the Federal Govenment be providing assistance to farmers affected by the fires?

BB: Thats a question that I'll refer to Secretary of Agriculture Ramirez..."

Three Fourteen: Electric Sheep

Check this out...

Electric Sheep

The Importance of Kitchens

Whenever I think about cooking (which is often), I begin to think about creating the perfect kitchen. I lived in a house for two years that had little more than a hallway for a kitchen, but inevitably we were always sitting on the counters, on the floor, or the trashcan, taking up every inch of space, whether it was during a party on Saturday night, or 7pm on a Wednesday. Its amazing that so many architects, interior designers, and all the other important people that determine how we live in our own homes have overlooked the fact that the kitchen is by far the best room to hang out in. Its where all the action is. Hunter S. Thompson got it right when he set up his office in his kitchen in Woody Creek, Colorado. I've compiled a list of things I'd acquire for my kitchen if I were a richer man. But I'm not.

• A couch. I've always dreamed of comfortable seating in my kitchen.
• A reasonably sized television for football and Red Sox games.
• One of those countertops with the overhang, and a few stools, for eating breakfast.
• A big fridge (with the stainless steel finish) with the freezer on the bottom.
• More than one oven.
• A quality toaster oven AND a 4-slice pop-up toaster.
• A large blender, capable of pureeing a shoe.
• Kitchen knives in a variety of shapes/sizes. Also, a razor sharp vegetable peeler.
• A wine rack that will inevitably always be empty
• An ice maker. One that can do the cubes and the crushed ice and replenishes itself fast.
• Hooks to hang your pots and pans from, because thats looks hip.
• A brick, wood-fired oven and an indoor grill with a big-ass vacuum hood, so you can grill even if there's a hurricane or a blizzard outside.
• A dishwasher capable of putting the dishes away.
• A worn-in leather chair with a reading lamp nearby.
• A kickin' sound system with voice activated iTunes.

Here is what the kitchen might look like...




I won't get into what food you should be stocking just yet. I'll save that for later.

Inevitably something catastrophic will happen. A ghost collapsed the kitchen table at Charles', Nate's, and Moses' house today, shattering multiple bottles of red wine and a big glass container of olive oil. What a waste.

Its almost beautiful in a disastrous sort of way.

Super Tuesday: My Tribute to Al Gore

As most of you know, my boy, Al Gore, recently shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

So the question now is whether or not Gore will use the Nobel prize as a springboard for entering the presidential race, joining a campaign that has already been launched for him by a group known as 'Draft Gore'. A self-described 'grassroots' organization that's been circulating petitions and raising awareness in hopes of dragging Al into the race. Unfortunately for them, for me, and for this country, thats not going happen. Here's why: (1) Hilary and Barack have Himalayan-sized treasure troves of cash, (2) re-entering politics on the back of Nobel Prize kinda detracts from the honor you've been given, and (3) most importantly, the man is having fun. Here's a brief synopsis of what he's done since he left government...

• Appeared on SNL, Futurama, and should be appearing on 30 Rock Thursday, November 8th.
• He's also a senior advisor to Google, sits on the board of Apple Inc., and is chairman and co-founder of Current TV (a cable network with over 38 million subscribers).
• He banks up to $175,000 per speaking appearance, and is estimated to be worth over $100 million.
• He also won the Nobel Prize, starred in an Academy Award-winning documentary, and received numerous other awards for his environmental policy work.
  

While he was in government he...

• Was ridiculed for having claimed to of 'invented the internet', when in fact he did more than any other politician during his time in the Senate and as Vice President to make way for the 'information superhighway', a term he coined. Read more here.
• Earned the nickname 'Ozone Man' from George Bush senior during the 1992 race. An attempt to belittle his environmental work.
• Won the popular vote in the 2000 presidential race, but was forced to concede the election to George W. Bush.
  
• He's also spoken out against the war in Iraq, and numerous other policies of the current administration. For the most part, he's been dead on.
  

It seems the private sector is a helluva lot friendlier to Gore. Too bad for us all.

How 'Bout Them Apples?: NFL 501(c)(3)

Just a quick idea I'd like to propose to Robert Kraft. An idea that I think the few thoughtful Pats fans out there will appreciate, because despite the all the wins, watching the Patriots play football is nearing the point of perverse. Teams like Miami that actually show up to play the Pats, with the thought of accomplishing anything other than assisting the Pats break records and at the same time bringing shame on themselves and their hometowns are some of the most naive, ass-backwards people in professional sports. A better strategy would be for the rest of the teams on the Pats' schedule to simply not show up, and if the Pats are coming to your hometown, just don't answer the door. Maybe letting them rust for another 9 weeks will give some loathsome team a prayer at beating them in the playoffs.

But back to my point...

I've been a Pats fan since 3rd grade. I sincerely love watching Tom Brady embarrass every defense he goes up against, and then act like it was nothing at the ensuing press conference. You know that Tom, Belichick, and Moss must get together every Wednesday, throw darts at an oil painting of Roger Goodell (pictured below) and laugh at videotape of the '72 Dolphins and how inferior they are. I imagine this usually culminates in a drunk-drive down to New York so Bill can piss on Mangini's doorstep. "Spygate" my ass. Why the fuck does every scandal, be it in the White House or Bill Belichick's sparsley decorated office have to have the suffix '-gate'? Its a testament to the sorry state of our media. You've got a juicy story like that and you call it Spygate? Jesus...

Anyways, my proposal to you, Robert Kraft, in order to make Patriots games worth watching again, is to sell Randy Moss. Actually, donate him. I think after this week the Dolphins are applying to become a certified 501(c)(3) non-profit, because they certainly looked like a charity case. Give him to them. Then we'll at least get to see Welker juking all over the field and Stallworth breaking 5 tackles after every catch - thats entertaining. Randy Moss is so good hes not even fun to watch, as Flubby over at KSK pointed out in this post. Donating Moss will earn the Pats a little goodwill, and will reduce their advantage over every other team to the point where they'll only look like a pack of hungry wolves decimating a deer caught in a bear trap, as opposed to Tom Brady being the 2nd coming of Christ himself. Just think about it Bob.

She's Worth Every Penny

If you're reading this, you're witness to the launch of my latest attempt at maintaining a blog (I've got 3 others with no entries). This comes on a momentous day in history, the same glorious Sunday that the New England Patriots decimated the Miami Dolphins 49 to 28, and then a mere 4 hours later the Red Sox began waging war on the hapless Jake Westbrook and his red-skinned cronies. The Sox beat Cleveland 11-2 to win the AL Pennant and the right to thrash those upstart Rockies at Fenway on Wednesday night. Its an awfully sexy time to be a Boston sports fan.

On a more personal note, I bought a pumpkin for $5 at the farm down the street and have very ambitious plans to carve the Autobots symbol squarely into that overpriced, oversized gord. My intention for it is to look something like this...

But odds are in favor of it looking more like this...

In keeping with the robotic alien Halloween theme, I also decided that I'm going to construct an Optimus Prime costume, provided I can find a mask that will fit my oversized dome. Its going to be pretty bitchin'.

Lastly, I do freelance work of all sort, so if you're looking for someone to commit libel, or just lie in writing for you, just send me an email. You can view my dull-witted verbal assaults on Rob White's musical artistry on both his temporary permanent website and on his MySpace page. Here is my latest work, a blurb for some MC to read before the ZETA sorority auctions off Maria to the guy in the audience with the deepest pockets and probably the worst breath...

"Maria is a 26 year-old double major in Mathematics and Secondary Education. Her love is like, to parody the Ohio Players, an exponential curve, baby, its unbounded. According to Wikipedia, as a Taurus, she can be practical, sexual, generous, and humorous, but watch out fellas, because she can also be inflexible, intimidating, and vengeful.

In addition to being a mediocre math-whiz, Maria is captain of the women's ultimate frisbee team, where she instructs the team in the art of laying out, hammering, and other acts of general promiscuity.

When she's not crunching numbers or tossing the disc, Maria enjoys playing it cool, tricking men into buying her drinks, laughing at her own jokes, disassembling jigsaw puzzles, putting out on the first date, and using Skype to talk to Fred. Shes worth every penny."

Thats it for now. Expect future posts (if they actually occur) to run the gamut of politics, ultimate, Boston sports, international news, tasty food, slightly pretentious progressive music and film, and possibly some retroactive entries concerning my month-long trip to Europe.

Knowledge Speaks
Wisdom Listens