The day after I got back from Amsterdam the sun came out and my mom and I took the dog for a walk in the woods in the nearby town Bietigheim, while the kids went to a circus. All the… Read More ›

Amsterdam
Listening to the band Suicide in a Peet’s coffeeshop in the suburbs, Redmond
I didn’t like the band Suicide before I heard them because I didn’t like their name, and when I saw the album art I liked them even less, it was the name Suicide made to look like it’d been carved… Read More ›
How the mist filled the valley in the morning with the light coming through
Though it’s a Saturday there’s no one at the lake, just some birds on the shore bathing, a kids’ soccer game with shouting in the distance but it’s muted, it goes in and out with the wind. I can sit… Read More ›
Some may say I’m wishing my days away
On Saturdays we only play reggae. I set the iPod by genre, select All, and it starts with Augustus Pablo, 1 of 275 songs, and ends with Serge Gainsbourg. It takes all day. When Laurent and his family were here… Read More ›
Just Like Billy Pilgrim’s Blues, Amsterdam
I came unstuck in time again and reappeared 20 years later pawing the glass on some Argentinian steakhouse window in the Red Light district with a bull’s head in the window convinced I’d been there before. Two days in Amsterdam… Read More ›
Strange dreams on a boat crossing the North Sea
In the cocktail lounge at dusk as the boat’s engines are starting, there’s an empty stage planned for live entertainment later, and Walking on the Moon playing, and it seems every song is made just for us and our journey… Read More ›
Red Virginia Creeper
Sitting in Laurent’s kitchen over an old farmhouse table he’s trying to describe what Capon means, the castrated cock he cooked the last time we were here in Metz around Christmas, and when he says castrated cock he suddenly looks… Read More ›
Let’s pretend we’re blind
I get lost in the canal side streets as I knew I would and lose track of the names, but recognise a jar of olives in a store front window and remember it was on my left before, and stop to turn… Read More ›
Listening to the band Suicide in an Amsterdam loft
When we leave Germany, the vines growing up my mom’s house have lost most of their leaves and her courtyard has a battered look to it with all the dead and the dying lying on top of each other —… Read More ›
Prague 3
My left heel hasn’t been right since I tripped down the steps in the Bahnhof on the way to a beer festival a couple weeks ago, the traditional Bavarian Trachten shoes a half-size too big, making it that much harder… Read More ›