sugar daddy

gots ourselves a sugar daddy in rome.

couchsurfed three weeks ago to stay with this guy in rome for two days and confirmed that we would stay with him. we sent him another message the other day to let him know when exactly we would be arriving to which he responded that he had invited another person over but that perhaps it could work out. he told us to call him when we arrived in rome.

big trip day. hostel. alright, we are going to meet R (that's what we will call him here) at the bologna post office. alright we are waiting. alright, he is half an hour late. alright i thought the umbrella guy was him. alright...it isn't and thats a little racist, saruh.

he finally shows up and the sun came out! but that is not necessarily indicative of his presence which is strange and somewhat unfriendly. we walk toward his house since we spent ALL OF OUR MONEY ON A HOSTEL due to him ditching us last minute. halfway there he tells us that his university dorm mates dont know about his couchsurfing account, so we should tell them that we are friends. then he says that we will be sharing a room. but on his profile it explicitly says that guests will have their own room. so it started feeling a little shady. lil bit

he said to me 'you didnt read the page completely?' to which i replied that YES, YES i did, and it said that we would have our own space.

he asked how much our hostel had cost and then offered to pay for us to sleep another night there. long story short, and one shady interaction later, we are accepting 30 euros from this guy getting out of a bank.

and now we are leaving for napoli tomorrow after a beautiful night walk through rome to the coloseum and fontane trevi. che bella.

in the words of emilie 'we saw a lot of shit that used to be shit but now isnt shit'

and the hostel guy told me that he wanted to bite me and wanted to pick the spot on my body where he could bite me.

alright

we aren't homeless
and we dont need to sleep in a church, thank you evan

italia

all i want to do here is sit on the street and listen to people speak italian all day long

in fact, if they want to whisper it into my ear personally, that's fine too. if they overcharge me for pizza, that's also fine, as long as they do it in italian

we had a disastrous trip to rome

went to the wrong bus stop to catch our midnight bus, worried that the next one wouldnt get us to barcelona on time for our flight. hauled ass to the other bus station, made it in time for the 1 oclock. tried to sleep for seven hours on the most uncomfortable seats. my stomach had stopped hurting earlier that day so there was no discomfort or anything. then we made it to barcelona where emilie tried to take out cash from her card and realized they had changed her pin number. the only money she has is on that card. and i have nothing left either. so...broke...we are broke.

we went to cool down in the hour before the busride to the airport, and ate some breakfast. two sleepless nights make two sleepless grrls kind of crazy and kind of dead. some south african guys tried to talk to us but we couldnt quite reciprocate the enthusiasm so they thought we were pushovers.

thirty minutes to catch the bus we check the internet to find out about our couchsurfer and lo and behold he invited another person to stay since he hadnt heard from us again even though we said we were definitely coming. thinks it can probably work out tho...ten minutes to catch the bus we try to work em's card once more and CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM credit cards taste good for atm machines. no more card for emilie and no help from the information desk woman who says that someone comes once a month to collect the eaten cards. THANK YOU CUSTOMER SERVICE. miss the bus by a minute. get the next one in fifteen minutes after calming a panicked emilie. get to the airport, throw away my spray paint...remove the harmful things from my carryon as somehow i always end up beeping for inappropriate luggage items. em calls her mom to work money out. HAPPY THANKSGIVING HAPPY THANKSGIVING WE ARE BROKE IN ITALY. but at least we are in italy

the place descends over a paradise. bathed in sunlight, mountains, swiss alps, beautiful green farm land. the farmland looks like giant landscape flowers. cant describe it other than that. the most beautiful place. i am FROM italy. this is where my ancestors are from and now i get to play here.

get into the city center with no energy and feeling a little sick. the subway is covered with awesome grafiti. the entirety of every train is COVERED on this one particular subway line. two actually. beautiful. get off at piazza bologna, our couchsurfer isnt picking up the phone, so we go eat AMAZING PIZZA where beautiful italians serve it to us with big smiles and then GELATTO. not going to describe it...too good.

walked around being homeless in rome with only 25 euro in our pockets. thank god for the internet cafe and the 12 euro hostel. almost broke now, but we werent homeless. collapsed asleep in my top bunk. text messages in the night and a crying grandma who misses me.

all i want to do is sleep in a bed



im going to miss emilie when i go. 11 more days if you count today and not the day that i leave. but...i am really excited to have my own bed. i dont think i even know where im going to live, but i am going to have my own SPACE. MY OWN SPACE. after three months of no saruh space, i think i will arrive, and not leave for three days

mmmmmmmmm italian

and if my country no longer loves me i´ll come back to you

spent the last few days in madrid lounging around making art

roses lemon verbeena kief mint powder music sound drums voice sing dance bang on things with impromptu drum sticks heartbreak heart resurrection beer beer beer wine laughter cookies for breakfast stomach still fucked

little bird that cant fly sitting on my head for an hour

saw nothing of the city but the inside of my head, the velvet underground box set photos, a girl who looks just like moira, and mc escher prints

oh AND...it seems that men in southern europe and north africa have made a hobby of telling me that they are going to travel to nyc and marry me. this happens so often that my dreams are infected with marriage proposals and even marriage threats that i can not escape.

in other news i have a new band. me emilie and gemma = dont touch my car, my car is red but dont touch my car

half a year

half a year has gone by since i turned 21
big transformation that happened may 23rd 2008 right into the 24th.

in 6 months i have traveled the states, western europe, colorado and wyoming, love all through my body and heart, fucked shit up quite noticeably, stopped running away

now i am in madrid feeling like maybe i am not me anymore but more me than before because everything you do comes from inside of you. the seeds are all there. so how do i weed the garden of the plants i dont like?
is it ok that they existed and popped up?

substances hit me hard like bricks falling from the 17th floor of my apartment. i put all of the bricks on the windowsill though. and i took the elevator way down way way way down to the ground floor. should have stayed inside.

integrity is a funny thing. you can live in your integrity for years and then in one moment you step outside for a drink, you lose your breath and out of your hands it falls. you drop it. and then are you a person of integrity anymore? do things work that way? no

you live in your integrity as much as you can and when you slip you reflect and you learn from it. but sometimes the lesson is that you cant let yourself slip in certain ways. that isnt being hard on yourself, that is being fair.

its not ok to hurt the people around you with your actions. but is it forgivable? when do you make exceptions for people?

wheel of fortune

i am riding the wheel of fortune. one minute rich, sleeping on the top bunk of a turkish trucker´s bed, with emilie in the truck of his friend, happy that everything is working out, despite one of our rides leaving without us. i set the alarm because we are supposed to travel to granada to see josh in granada, and a truck driver said that he would take us. we shook on it and everything. but where is he when i wake up at 5 am naturally, even though i didnt sleep at all the day before save for on the two hour bus ride
he is nowhere to be found
and we are still here. we bought a bus ticket even though i am broker than bear stearns.

its hard this gypsy life. we both feel really comfortable in it though. i am starting to feel like it is so natural for me to live this way. ive been realizing that this life of movement and fortune is really natural to me. it is completely natural that i am always looking for a ride or a place to stay. and i am getting good at living in a place too. good at talking to people and meeting people. sort of. a little better than before at least. i am understanding how i want to live in a place. interact with people, be interested. met an old wise man who i feel is my friend.

but it is hard. i have been writing a lot of songs and i want to play them for everyone here. want to roam with my music. college. music or nursing or education or science
dreams become really clear when your life becomes emptier.

so i am tired, have the shits, my period, emilie is getting the shits, we are not in granada yet, my flight to italy is in 8 days and then i come home. long time short time

drank tea with the turkish truck drivers and then they fed us. two rides left us. still here in algeciras spain
we sat on their little stools and everything
watched movies in turkish with them

good things
but i am sitting here crying in this internet cafe because i am tired and dehydrated and malnourished from three days of not holding anything down and being afraid to drink the water.

ill be in granada in five hours.

hammam

walked into the hammam with bloody thighs.

hammam is similar to turkish bath. public bath with massage and sauna.

i was the only white person and they overcharged me a great deal but i considered the fact that i am a white person walking into an arabic establishment and asking them to wash my body, so i accepted the 90 diram price with a smile. it only ammounted to five extra dollars anyway.

took off all my clothes save for bloody underwear. i only brought one lunapad on this trip. i think i lost my blood bandana somewhere in germany or france. i hope no one tries to wear that. i manage just fine though. i did bleed on ni's sheets in paris somehow. my blood defied gravity and got on the blanket covering me. unclear. period tangent

so i took off all my clothes minus the underwear and walked into a dimly lit chamber with a fountain splashing hot water, where a girl was filling buckets with it and giving it to the other naked women in the bath. some young, some old, all sitting on the marble floor washing themselves. i had no idea what to expect other than i was getting a wash and a massage. she started pouring the hot water on me and then rubbing this jelly like soap all over my body. first coat. then i rinsed it off for a while and relaxed until she came back with shampoo and then added another coat of the soap to my body. i got to lay down on my back while she rubbed my skin rather ferociously with her little scrubber. i tensed up a lot when she started washing my heart and throat. that area of my body is so sensitive to people touching it. then on my stomache and more rubbing layers and layers of skin off of my body.

shampoo, more soap, spread legs, stretch and backrub, underwear turned thong. it was very strange to have someone washing my body. they called it a massage, but it was a vacant mother scraping away all the old from me. how fitting a ritual when i embrace the changing nature of things.

when it was over another woman dried my hair and when she heard me singing she started singing along with me. we mimicked each other for a little while and when i left i thanked her in arabic and she got so excited by it that she threw up her hands and yelled SHOOKRAN BAZEF

went back to the hostel and found emilie and MC talking to our old friend who sits on the steps right outside of where we live sewing his bags and teaching the local kids. we hung out with him for a bit talking and playing with haja. haja is fifteen and her mother divorced her father for a new man who doesnt want her and her sister to live with them, so she lives with her aunt right next door to mohammad, our friend. she is sweet sweet, with a big smile and kind heart and is sharp. she cleans all day for her aunt. she hangs out with mohammad in between chores and radiates joy for being alive. we hugged a lot and mohammad told us the story of his life along with his vision of the world. he told us to teach our children about nature, about the beauty of being alive, and to love everyone; no matter what country.

morocco is a peaceful place.

we climbed one of the mountains at night with a young boy; also named mohammad, and i saw two shooting stars - one that looked like a meteor. it was such a sight to behold. so quiet watching the city and the mountains sleep. communication slips with mohammad while talking about politics. trying to say that i believe that people love obama and want changed; but in spanish not knowing the words. when trying to help me find them he said I LOVE YOU. he meant to say that many people love obama.

my musician friends invited mc and i to a wedding today but they stood us up. yesterday i thought he asked me to marry him, but it turns out he was inviting me to a different wedding.

an old man in tanger told me that when he earns a million dollars he is going to come to new york and pick me up

tomorrow we leave for spain. for real this time. emilie and i will take the bus back to tanger; and MC will go on to casablanca to pick up her sister. a sad parting; but we are making plans to travel once a month back and forth between montreal and new york city. after the ferry, em and i will hitch hike to granada where we will hang out with JOSH KORR for a day or two. really exciting/ i havent seen him since circus. im psyched.

after that, hitch to madrid, spend a few days with emilie's friend from honduras and then head over to barcelna for a day or two, fly to rome, spend two days there, hitch to amalfi, and then isernia, hitch to rome, and fly home to nyc on the 9TH

strange this is almost over. hard to believe it has been so much time in foreign countries. hard to believe i speak spanish.

hard to believe i grew so much

its still very much the present tho. it wont be ALMOST OVER until i am in nyc.

i think when i return to america it will be a great relief to be around people speaking the same language as me and have more thean a couple established relationships with. strange.

something you take for granted when everyone speaks your language, is how much we bullshit and smalltalk. here you speak with gestures, speak from your heart, and think long and hard about the essence of what you are saying.

when i speak in spanish i think things through so fully

my last post from morocco. i will miss it.

where are you

few more pikshers from what feels like SEVEN YEARS AGO

i never got to put up more pikshers. my dad wants to be my facebook friend. also, my friend josh is living in granada and i get to SEE HIM!

on demand

james, you asshole, here is how i got to morocco

emilie and i were in spain, homeless - a sacrifice for being able to get to andalusia in one day from barcelona - a good 1000 km distance. we talked about the possibility of taking the ferry to morocco and decided maybe not because it would be expensive and we didnt have enough time. three days later in malaga we discovered it is actually quite cheap, and both of us thinking the other one wanted to go, became enthusiastic at the prospect of going and pushed for it.

so we ended up staying with zakaria - a beautiful 27 year old percussionist who leads his local traditional music collective, and is studying for his masters in sociology. he lives with his family and when we arrived, he had another couchsurfer from quebec named MC who we became friends with and are now traveling with.

we were only going to stay in tanger for a few days
but we decided to go east on the coast into the mountains to chefchouan with MC. yesterday, MC was robbed of 300 dirhams (30 euros, 43 dollars) because of a shady hash deal, and we were stopped by a salesman who was very friendly and wanted to teach us about medicinal herbs. we spent an hour in his shop sitting in a row, with him WIRED as hell telling us how much he loved us . our bodies are perfect, I smell FANTASTIC (despite a week without showering) and he took to sniffing me in my hair and neck. i cant describe him other than, every two seconds he would try to kiss one of us on the hands or the cheek. he loved my belly and would kiss it and rub it and all we could do was laugh hysterically. after about 30 minutes it became uncomfortable, but he gave us free herbs and ended up being harmless. just uncomfortable.

you have to empty yourself constantly here or you go crazy from sensory overload.

made friends with a traveler at the hostel who i had seen on the street and we had very intense intimate conversations and then played music together. 46 years old from england, history of family abuse, real sweet guy. we became good friends and when he invited me to his space because it was cold on the roof, he was very polite and told me he didnt have any intentions. fabulous.

for awhile i was upset because i felt like i wasnt meeting anyone important to me, but it turns out that i have made relations in every city. funny how your brain tricks you.

im going to climb one of the mountains today.

we go back to spain on the 16th and hitch up to madrid for a few days, then barcelona; then fly to rome where we stay for two nights, and then hitch to isernia where there is a villa that is in my lineage. after one night there, we travel to sorrento and amalfi and hang out on the beach until the 7th when we split ways and i begin the hitch back to rome for my flight on the 9th to carry me home to the US.

so soon.

i dont know if anyone reads this anymore
if you're reading this, say something.

james,

did this make you happy
is this enough information for you
are you going to tell me what your life is or are you going to demand it of me with nothing in return
ha

i love your body i love your smell

well, one whole day in chefchouan and collectively, emilie, mc (our new travel companion) and i have managed to get heckled to death, robbed, and essentially molested by a wonderful man who only wants us to be happy in truth.

then on our way home i was offered some jiggy jiggy by a man who i told my name was clementine to.

zakaria's father, who is the spitting image of a 60 year old evan, called me his daughter when we left and we have had such beautiful love and luck.

we are staying in morocco for more time. when we decided to go to ,orocco, both e, and i thought that the other one really wanted to go but werent very attached to the idea for ourselves; thank god we did tho; universe matchmaker

little spazz

when i feel alive i try to imagine a careless life
a scenic world where the sunsets are all breathtaking



my little antennae are strong strong these days. i anticipate messages, have dreams about them, wake up to them, think about contacting people and lo and behold they have done the work for me.

and the way we catch rides. we know who will pick us up. and if we set our intentions to get impossible distances in one day, we make it. some divine grace.

homeless or not.

we are going to morocco today and when we get there we are going five hours into the country where we will be trekking through the desert on camels. strange.

we swam in the mediteranean sea yesterday. we sat in the sun laughing and sleeping and cartwheeling. we walked as far as we could on the beach and then jumped in when we saw someone else in the water.

the most sensual experience. pure salt sea water all over my body. my limbs and torso sliding in between water molecules. staring at the beautiful blue sky and white puffy clouds high high up in the stratosphere.

healing salt.

tired night of writing many songs and confirming my flight on dec 9th.

talked to my mom about the dogs - her passion in life. it felt good to laugh with her.

body. such a strong connection to feelings in my body and emotions manifesting physically. southern spain mountains a hazy backdrop against the western sky golden setting sun. the BLUE of the mediteranean. life is a little fairytale and i could live this way forever until i remember there are invisible forces that keep me sustained that i must nurture.

i am the siamese twin of my shadow
my room mate came in so we stayed up all night
i put on a show of our hands as animals
she laughed at their psychosis and at mine

we´ve met such incredible people who care for us so well. i see things very clearly right now. people have been helping us so fully on our journey, in whatever way that they can. giving us maps, rides, information, their beds, even MONEY. strange. their care and affection and love. we have stayed with such incredible people and it has been a push and pull of different energetic interactions. i have never felt more sexual but without the need to express it through sex. i have been channeling it creatively into music and writing and loving interaction with emilie and strangers.

but i think that is the most important shift in me. help people. i try to be mindful of this always, but be unafraid in this world. INTERACT.

little shy bird

los camiones y dormemos in la calle

emilie and i slept on the street in barcelona. walking around a seedy equivalent to the 11th avenue loading docks in manhattan´s midtown, we sought a place to plant ourselves for nine hours before heading back to the truck that took us from perpignon france to barcelona, so that we could go to andalusia with him in the morning.

we laughed and laughed and told interactive stories one word each at a time. the alliteration game. the story of our trip. the sleeping bags came out and we snuggled into them wondering if it was safe to sleep on the street. there is no way to describe what it looked like, other than kind of blair witch project-esque. laughed at being homeless. woke up at 330 to a cold emilie snuggling close. moral is to bring a sleeping bag pad. 430 alarm clock, walked over to the truck, waited for him to open his shades and invite us in. the sun didnt come up for a few hours and i started thinking it would never. it would be dark forever. we stopped at a rest stop and the sun started peaking out. we picked out food and then pedro, our truck driver friend told us to get orange juice as well, and paid for our breakfast. we fell asleep in the truck for awhile to valencia oranges and olives on the landscape. beautiful. semi arrid climate with beautiful sandy rocky mountains.

woke up slept woke up

made friends with pedro. santa clause is fat and has a big nose in spain as well. discovered that i can speak spanish better than i realized, and is logical for my education. esta bien. esta verdad.

we entered andalusia, so beautiful and old and far removed from anything. all the way in the south. i suddenly felt so isolated with how remote we were. the only country near us is portugal. we are almost as far south in western europe as you can go. the furthest south, tarifa, is tomorrow.

the towns are stereotypical spanish cowboy movie towns. houses built into the earth, the mountains. little windows in caves. CAVES. CAVES. i love seeing places this way, from the windows of trucks and cars. speaking only a little bit of the language, not completely understanding what people are saying. but im getting a hang of it.

we were dropped off by pedro at a rest stop in the middle of andalusia, and he gave us his map and 20 euros to go buy food and his email. we got another truck ride immediately. we were going to sleep in granada last night, but went slightly too far and got a ride to malaga after eating a large dinner. the guy who drove us was the greatest, nicest, most genuine car salesmen i have ever met and drove us right into the center of malaga to look for a hostel. he wasnt even going to malaga. but he drove us there when he heard that we didnt know where we were going.

the ride from granada to malaga was probably the most beautiful drive i have ever done. hands down. beautiful arrid mountains turning into lush forested mountains, with beautiful white houses right on the hillsides. the sunset pink and the sky blue and angelic gold. soft angelic gold. and then the view of malaga and her sea. i feel so far from anything now. picasso lived here.

emilie and i are sleeping one more night here in a hostel that is beautiful. we get a big bed for the two of us in our own room. there are so many couches for us to sit in before we leave. in our room alone.

i dont ever want to leave and i want to go home all at once.

i feel like i could just evaporate into the road and sea and never return.

there has been so much excitement this week. nervous breakdowns, beautiful montpellier folks, beautiful parisian folks, strange clermont ferrand folks.

we are at the point in the journey where we both understand that we will find exactly what we need when we need it...a ride, a place to stay. it all comes. information too. and i feel like when we set our intentions, we get exactly what we need.

i am back in the state of feeling homeless, lonely, but i am in southern spain and i have plenty of time to be lonely when i am somewhere else so i will enjoy the beauty of this country and region, and i will catch up with that later if i have to.

traveling is the most fun and happiness i have had in a long time. little gypsy thing

les saintes maries de la mer

if anyone is reading this, the mediteranean sea is the place for me