oh, i will be fucked over by the man, and there is no one to console me when i arrive. linus fled to the north, finding out about the joys of wall-to-wall carpeting at my folks’ place, and so there are no cat shoulders to cry on, at, or to.

i just knocked the electronic ticket machine, which didn’t work anyway, and the parking lot lady said she called the cops on me. (the cop was on my side, and was laughing in a lite-version of disbelief when the airport employee underlings arrived with their forms and polaroids and began snapping photos of my car. i was not laughing.)

“that chip has been there for years.” i said, pointing out the missing chunk from the right-side mirror. that chip has been there for years. “that chip has been there for years.” i told the cop.

“he says that chip has been there for years.” the cop told the bitch taking photos.

they will certainly decide to bill me for somewhere between $500 and $1500, to give the electronic ticket machine a new coating of paint. $2000 if they decide to use primer, first.

if this happens, i will call officer… oh shit, i already forgot his name. JAckson. yes, officer jackson and i will beg to differ. officer jackson isn’t timid about using his goddamned nightstick if he’s gotta, i would say.

poor, poor me.

-

this week i was in galveston, deciding that, despite my pride, i should be a low-profile employee. yes, it is true that i have limitless potential, and i could rise and shine something glorious, be a model employee, the best at everything, (such a shame that no one seems to realize my full, full full capabilities), blazing amazing new paths and never making mistakes, it is true, but despite this, the low-profile is better, because more notoriety means more job. more responsibility more of the time. that’s something i would enjoy like a housefire.

so i slept through the banquet last night. i walked along the beach. i watched kids splash around in the crudeoil/seawater mixture. i was envious.

earlier in the week, james and milton and i took the ferry across the bay, and we would always take in the ride from the second-tier deck, to look down on the people who were blindsided by waves crashing against the hull, and they were loving it, and we were loving it, and me watching the pelicans always crash into the water, and i assumed they were after a fish. but probably not the same fish. and then james spotted a “shark” which was a dolphin. or i think it was a dolphin. it’s like it was rolling into the surface and back down, which i took as a sign that it was coming up for air, which i’ve noted that sharks do not tend to do, due to the viewing of plenty of national geographic episodes, maybe. so i deemed it to be a dolphin maneuver, and i stand by my claim. james said “…okay, a dolphin.”

i always thought texas was too republican for dolphins.

there was the guy on the other side, waiting to take the ferry back to galveston, and we were too, and we were out of our vehicles and talking, and his bumper sticker said “I’ve had EIGHT years of Clinton and Gore, and by GEORGE… I’m BUSHed.”

cute. i couldn’t help wondering, though, whether this guy’s life had gone into such a nosedive with democrats in the white house. (and not even democrats, really… but lite-republicans.) maybe he’s way pissed off that clinton didn’t up the ante for emissions standards for the auto industry, paving the way for an explosion of inexpensive sport-utility-vehicles. that’s probably it.

he even LOOKED like a george bush. DAMN it.

last night there was one cloud, maybe five miles offshore, that was flashing a little lightning, but nobody else was playing. it was too bad.

-

shoulders have just called on the phone, and have offered to meet me out for cocktails. i will offer bribes at the chance to cry on them. i will not fail. i will have to finish wherever this was going later.

ladies & gentlemen,

deceleration is a bitch.

7 days ago we were walking briskly underneath and past the eiffel tower, people watching the mall-like grounds between the tower and napoleon’s military school, where the kids would play guitars and thump bongos and drums and sing something air-arabic while this girl and that girl belly-danced.

now i am doing laundry and sorting parts and pieces back into a haughty organization of closets and shelving.

23 days ago i was having trouble with all sorts of utensils, on rochester’s smelly version of a waterfront, trying to separate crab meat from stenching crab bodyshell, which would send all nearby guts into uncontrollable spasms of disgust. it was hardly worth the effort, mostly in that it did not taste good. and this was my first “gay date”, we would call it, me with chad, erin with her friend, so that the friend’s boyfriend had no reason to be jealous and maliciously attack me in his bloodheathen, redneck-jealous sorts of ways.

26 days ago, i stayed in the car and thought about what i should be doing as a good friend, a better friend, because we were parked in this tiny forgotten cemetary, lodged behind small town farms, two hours deep into new york’s rurals, where adam’s mom was buried when he was four, a place he’d never seen, a place that’s so inadvertently tied to what makes adam Adam, motherless and unwanted, after telling him 29 days ago that i will never be able to relate to him when it comes to building blocks like this, as some kind of excuse for not knowing what to say, something that would be meaningful. later i hoped that the farmer did not taint the experience for him, when our car was in the way of the tractor’s route back to the barn, and the farmer got lippy and impatient with me as i tried to respect the silence and adam’s moment, where this calloused shit-of-the-earth farmer would give me the heartless and shallow task of asking adam for the goddamn car keys a few moments after being knelt on his mother’s grave. if the venom i gave that farmer wasn’t enough. or uncalled for. if i tainted the experience for adam.

11 days ago following jeff’s merciless march along the thames, almost tripping over sir francis drake’s excuse for a ship of the great oceans.

6 days ago i walked alone along the seine and gave into homesickness and the desire for no-frills american conversation.

now, tangentially, i may go to a saturday night party, and even though i can’t remember ever actually going to a party before, at least not in richmond, where i have sort-of dwelled for the last three years, speaking volumes for my social adept-ness. i am confident that i can walk away with all the more bits and parts of confidence as i may have going in, because as a human being, watch out, i’m versatile and surprising.

that’s more re-acceleration than deceleration, but that’s allowable. i am flexible with the changing conditions of livejournaling.

19 days ago, i was beginning to feel the draining affect on my lifeforce that comes with going for long periods of time without programming and channeling music, and song caches, into my brain. i had decided to take no such media and devices, because i was packing really damn lite, one big backpack is all, and more than one wardrobe is beyond the status of just a recommendation, because the human body is a disgusting, heaving bag of juices and gases destined to go toxic sooner rather than later, and humans are constantly leaking all of this onto their clothes, and so they must change, and friggin often, and cleanse and rinse the worn items, in order to restore them to a state of acceptability. it seemed like i was constantly sniffing my armpits, and i was constantly disappointed with what i found. i packed four each of underwear, shirts, socks and pants, which left just enough room in the pack for a book and a pen and 42 ibuprofen caplets, which were completely necessary for staving off immobility.

42 days ago, i strained my back, although 30 days ago, i had assumed it was all better. after 10 hours in a confined airplane seat 20 days ago, my back had revolted and the muscles shredded as i walked, so that i was glad that i had left enough extra room in my pack for the purchase of a small bottle of ibuprofen.

16 days ago, i snapped a photograph of the underside of the roof of the København rail station.

14 days ago, i snapped another of a part and parcel of the Flåm valley.

12 days ago, there was stonehenge in the southwest of england, where no one knows just why or how.

9 days ago, don quixote waved hello to me.

7 days ago, the eiffel tower was about to catch fire, and i could have guessed.

moments ago, i received a phonecall, and i must go and possibly play badminton (even though it seems awfully dark to be playing badminton, which makes it unsafe and possibly illegal) and drink and i will try my damndest to not act like a dumb fool. or a punter?

[siouxsie is not pronounced "sweeeks-see!".]

today i am in madrid, and my train was six hours late, and i have become a physical shambles, with headaches and back strains and bruised ribs and acne outbreak on forehead and cut nose and sore feet, and anyways, sitting still is bad rather than good.

last night i was witness to the first annual “TM´s dream festival”, which would include TM´s two very favorite musical acts, playing one after another in a spanish bull-fighting arena.

how lucky!

these bands were called Low and Radiohead.

Low gave me chills along my spinal cord, which is something i have not felt in a very very long time. i think it had something to do with having something that is so ´me´ coming to see me halfway across the world in the midst of my isolation and physical trauma and language barriers and bitchy and terrible frenchmen. plus they played an amazing new song which was subtley and quietly vicious, and i love that about them. i´ll call it “when i go deaf”, because that´s what al said a lot. it was about going deaf and giving up and not caring about anything anymore. i am having these battles.

thom yorke is completely nuts in the best way. they were perfect straight through. chilling “climbing up the walls”. perfect.

i was sitting in the stands with a perfect stance and a good view and i was happy with this, and there were only a few moments with a crazy dancing spaniard who came very close to adding “black eyes” to my list of physical detriments, what with his drunken flying elbows.

i was in london for a few days. it wasn´t all that. i saw stonehenge though, and it´s pretty amazing.

all in all, i´m not very impressed by big cities. they just make me nervous and very lonely. i prefer the small towns and rurals. i wonder if that means i should build a small house away from everyone whenever i come home again.

also, i like america. a few tweeks and philosophical changes, and a change of captaincy, and we´ll be alright. part of the reason for this trip was to find out. we´re not so different. it´s all the same.

i miss my bed. but i think i miss my toilet most of all.

i will be ready to fly in a few days.

time ran out. bye,

-tim.

hello. i am in Flåm. Flåm is where all of the Yes album covers come from. Flåm is the most gorgeous place in the world. today i rode my piece of shit rented bicycle up maybe 800 metres of vertical distance and along probably 5 kilometres of horizontal distance, and i passed many cliffs and waterfalls and valleys and but i was always along the river, which sometimes is calm and sometimes is rapid and violent but always is blue, from the clay, they say.

in my journal last night, i recounted my so far, which has been Paris, Hamburg, Århus, København, Oslo, and Fråm, and also much train-age. in Scandanavian, train is “tog”. But i like to write “tøg”, because on this keyboard, characters such as “ø” and “å” are available to be, readily, so i will use them even when it is not required. ¤.

haha.

i think that Århus and Flåm are my favorites, so far.

Oslo was more fucking american than america is. disgråce.

i have stayed in hostels, and have still managed to meet not very many people. i have met Jesse from Kamloops (Canada), who is a Leafs fan, too. and Robert, who was in the cot next to mine from Paris to Hamburg, and he is a very important person when it comes to wind turbines in Europe. i explained to him that I, in fact, am a very unimportant person when it comes to combustion turbines, in america, and he appreciated this and lended me sausages and beer, and we talked of how he likes to make nature films with music that resembles how you say?… “tubular bells?”

yes.

i have three minutes left on this call. today i go back to Oslo and get my alienation on, and then tomorrow is my flight to London, where i think i may finally be able to speak English rampantly, and with ease. plus i will also see Marcy and Jeff, who are starting their vacation.

wish yøu were here,

-timothy m.