Life is very difficult while traveling. For a while, your body seems to be on your side, experiencing all the great things your mind is going through with patience and resignation.
"Well, if you must, you must. I'll just be along for the ride, keeping track of your every movement, bite, and unwary hand placement." Eventually, though, and more often sooner than later, your habits catch up with you, and there are no excuses. For example: when you look down at the scale and find you've gained five pounds in spite of all the walking, or when you look at yourself in the mirror and find a HUGE pimple in the middle of your forehead.
When you sit down somewhere and realize the most attractive option is immediate sleep; when you calm down for a week or so and your body decides to remind you how frail your immune system ACTUALLY is, or when the curtain is lifted from the romance and all that's left is the stench of your feet in a hotel room in a town whose name you couldn't pronounce for the life of you. None of this comes from personal experience. No, of course not.
I'm nauseous this morning. Maybe because I'm still technically lactose intolerant, and last night was a whole lot of ice cream, and very quickly. My stomach still hasn't forgiven me, possibly because I wasn't concerned with its welfare while stuffing my face. Just goes to show: you can't escape your decisions, regardless of their scope. Let me start over.
Yesterday, I woke up at ten thirty, and was tired. I took a shower, because sedentary people do these things. Brushed my hair out, fixed my face, and went into the kitchen for breakfast. Had some olives, dates, and black tea, because I wasn't feeling my best. I fled to my room with the boxes and the drum kit because I couldn't really stand sitting at the table awkwardly making conversation for another morning. Gill eventually came in, and I confessed how crappy I was feeling.
We'd smoked hookah the day before. I'd partaken in a cigarette, and my throat felt like it had been scythed by the pastoral cast of Yentl. I was coughing, which was potentially-frightening, because every single person in this house has fallen victim to a strange illness that renders you absolutely dead for days on end. It always begins with a cough. That's the first thing I need in a foreign country that I'm leaving in a day, right? So instead of going to the National Gallery with Gill, I decided I would spend the day inside, recovering. I ventured out and bought some raspberry jam, sweating all the way. The day was hot. I wasn't feeling well. Luckily, Gill understood, and hovered a little bit to insure I was feeling well. She even dragged out her only (lost) bottle of nail polish so I could feel slightly more like a human being, and made me tuna pasta for lunch.
All day, I sat in the room, read, and drank tea with raspberry jam. This is possibly the best thing to drink when you're anticipating illness, because raspberry jam causes you to sweat, and sweating out the sick is a very good idea. I finished another graphic novel, and my last book of vacation reading, which brings my grand total for the month up to 9. Seven books, and two entire series of graphic novels. Sometimes, I wonder what's wrong with me. Other times, I wonder what's wrong with the rest of the world.
The Learners was good, by the way. Chip Kidd is the master of one medium (jacket-making, so graphic design) and is quickly making advances on another one. I'm an equal-opportunity bibliophile, but even I sense that Kidd is something special. Since The Learners is a sequel, I recommend people read Cheese Monkeys first. Not only does it introduce you to the characters, it seems a little more light than this more current book. The current one has been out for two years or so now, but I've been waiting for the opportunity to purchase the paperback, because the hardcover edition (though absolutely beautiful, and chock-full of fun graphic inserts and things) is super expensive. I finally bought the paperback in the Borders Closing Sale.
This series chronicles the misadventures of one, Happy, an up-and-coming graphic artist in the 20th century. People say it's a little like Mad Men, which I haven't seen, so I can't verify. Cheese Monkeys explains Happy's college years, and The Learners is what happens once he's out on the job market for reals. Happy has a good voice for narration, because he's a little unattached in spite of his engagement with the world around him.
In The Learners, Happy moves to New Haven, Connecticut, for a job as an assistant to a graphic artist in an advertising firm whose main client is a potato chip company. He takes this step because his freshman-year Graphic Design professor started out at the same firm years ago. Happy learns an unbelievable amount about the graphic world, and the reality of the utilities of graphic design. He gets a firm grasp on the fundamental skills like drawing a straight line, and rendering in blue pencil.
The great thing about setting this book in the 1960's is that these techniques come across as wholeheartedly brilliant, or as they appear to most novices hearing about this stuff for the first time (Kidd's readers), instead of the first thing you learn nowadays in your graphic design class. Happy's doing fine for a while until a ghost from his past storms her way into his life with the grace of a well-dressed bull in a paint shop, demanding the misplaced head of a rhinoceros. Her name is Himillsy, and is the fag hag to Happy's--whoops, sorry, that's never said outright!--anyway, her intervention sparks a chain of events that lead Happy to taking part in the Stanley Milgram experiment going on at Yale.
If you're somehow unaware of the Milgram experiments, or want a refresher, here's a link to the Wikipedia article. Don't be shy to follow it; I'll still be here when you get back.
Now that we're all up to speed, let's return to our scheduled programming. Happy takes part in the experiment, and finds out something that he never wanted to know about himself. He just can't get over the guilt and shame brought on as a result of the thing he learns, and spirals downward, which Kidd illustrates through frequent breaks of the fourth wall, very interesting use of text/font, and design influencing the content of the pages. He does this very well, being a graphic artist. As a book that stands alone, I would call The Learners a rousing success. As part of a series, I would give it a cursory golf clap and be done with it.
Firstly, in Cheese Monkeys, Happy is completely obsessed with one particular person. That person is mentioned only peripherally in The Learners. Himillsy also takes a large part of the text away from Happy in the first book. She steals the show neatly, and with the great style of a true Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Here, she has a round chapter, and occasional mention later on.
Kidd drops so many different potential plots that I didn't notice when the actual plot came sidling into the room, and it was so much less interesting than any of the other routes he could've taken that I was exceedingly underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong: I liked the book. I just thought Cheese Monkeys was much better, and less up its own ass. There were some legitimately funny moments in both books, but Kidd seems obsessed with the idea of building a calm, idyllic world, and completely shattering it in the last few pages with the bipolar gusto of a child who spends an entire afternoon building a sandcastle, admires it for a moment, and kicks it to bits. Kidd is a great artist, and a wonderful designer. He has a way with words, makes me laugh, and seems to have mastered multiple literary techniques designed to keep me engaged. I'm not sure if he breathes life into his characters. In short: for an artist, he's an amazing writer.
I would definitely recommend this book to my artist friends, and people looking for some relatively light summer reading that's as far removed from Danielle Steel as possible.
Anyway, that occupied the majority of my afternoon. I also read Paul Pope's 100%, which was short, well-drawn, and dramatic. I painted my nails, and drank more tea. When I finished the book, Gill let me borrow If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino, which is meant to be my introduction to Post-Modern literature. So far, it's entertaining, but bulldozes through the fourth wall as if it were air. I'm about forty pages in. Hopefully, it'll keep me for a few hours on the plane today.
Then, Rashed made green curry, Gill made rice, Diogo came home, and we sat down to eat. After food, Gill and I practiced catching gummy bears in our mouths from opposite sides of the table like frat boys while the boys sat on the futon and watched Naruto. I don't get the appeal, since I'm not a boy, and predisposed to hating most anime that's main-stream because of the--forgive me if I misspell this!--weebos.
Anyway, after that, we all went out to The Old Queen's Head to listen to Joe's band. They were decent, though slightly cacophonous. The guy before them was a fairly convincing one-man band. Whiskey sours in this time zone are pretty decent, but served with lemon, which confused me at first. Some hilarity ensued as we watched the band members hit on girls, and we sat down in the couch that was literally right in front of the stage because Diogo is a brave one, and we all wanted to do it, but were too shy.
Our seat afforded me a good angle on the rest of the room, so I took a little time checking out the fashion of the Indie scene in London. This year, they really like the bun on top of your head, the way they've been doing it in Japan for years now. Also, they like the checker pattern, skinny jeans, and wing-tipped shoes. Gill correctly associated it with 1960's American fashion, with a splash of rockabilly. I don't mean to seem imperialistic, but the more I travel Europe, the more I find people trying to emulate American culture and fashion. Rock n' roll, as it were, came from the jazz scene in America. In Prague, we saw a Jack Rabbit Slim's (of Pulp Fiction fame). In Italy, the younger kids were all rocking their Chucks and Adidas.
I digress. By the time Joe's band finished, it was about ten, so we went out for a smoke, and then headed back to Gill and Diogo's, where we sat until about 12:30 playing a Portuguese card game and consuming two pints of Ben & Jerry's. One was Phish Food, and the other was Half Baked. Both were delicious. Then, in no fit state to blog, I went to sleep, and awakened today at 8 AM for no real reason at all.
Today is Good Friday here, and a Bank Holiday, so everyone has work off. This is good, because everyone will be relaxed, but bad, because I need to be at the airport right at rush hour. I still need to get my super authentic British fish & chips, and we're leaving the flat at one PM today.
I can't believe that my trip is already over. It didn't turn out at all how I expected it to go, but I saw a lot of Europe, and spent some time getting acquainted with myself as a traveler. I learned a few things about myself in the process.
1. I am stubborn. If I say I'm going to do something, I will fight for it until the bitter end.
2. There's a steel pole in my back instead of a spinal column. If I need to, I will carry a 20-pound backpack up and down flights of stairs, through a city, in the snow, uphill both ways. And I won't complain about it anywhere but my blog. ;-)
3. Art museums take me an average of an hour and a half per floor.
4. Archeological museums interest me peripherally, at best.
5. Every meal should begin with bread and olive oil, and end with gelato.
6. Little luxuries make me sane, and feel as though I'm at home. These include, but are not limited to: hot showers, shaving my legs, painting my nails, changing my shoes, e-mails from my loved ones, music in English, and having clean socks.
7. I actually enjoy feeling like crap on the road.
8. I can make myself understood in the Czech Republic through sheer will.
9. I'm not addicted to cigarettes, pot, liquor, or any other substance intended to get you "high." This includes caffeine.
10. Cappuccinos are delicious; dates are your best friends.
11. I'm a compulsive collector/hoarder of books.
12. Pickpocketing is completely avoidable if you're aware enough.
13. I'm capable of drinking entire bottles of supremely crappy wine.
14. When stressed, I grind my teeth during sleep.
15. Water is the most amazingly useful substance known to man.
16. Riding a bike is simultaneously easier and more difficult than it looks.
I think that's about all the wisdom I've gathered thus far. Too soon, it's time to go. I'm ready to be home, and back to my normal life. Anyway, this is by no means the end of my travels. In the mean time, though, I'll have to find something slightly more interesting than my life to write about.
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