All Over Europe

Wrote disjointed stories on my travel journal. Here they are below, accompanied with photos I took when I backpacked all over Europe.

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Old, old lands. Old stones. Old buildings. Sky's always new though, yeah? New and old are human's concept. Makes me laugh, the whole struggle is a bad joke. Struggle, wriggle, wriggle. The sound of my own chuckles feels conceited in my own ears. Marseilles is alright, it is alright, yesterday it was a stranger and back when I was still hanging out with my friends in the quaint suburbias, it was a rockstar, but then I was always talking about shit I didn't know about that I'd read on the internet, and I was telling the kid- "Marseilles was the birthplace of The Fight, y'see, that's where the song comes from. The song of Revolution."

There was a time in my life that I was capitalizing some first letters of words in my head. I always wonder if people could tell which word was which. Funny thing was-

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In the mornings people aren't ready yet. Most aren't. Look at the time, it's all filled with light and sensibilities and people aren't ready yet for being people. I walk outside the hostel and see a corner that seems familiar. Some corners feel familiar, they do. You'd be in a foreign land and you'd walk around the city and you'd feel oooh-aaah mostly but then you'd see this corner and you'd feel as if you'd walk right back into your neighbourhood if you clear that corner around the bend.

There are birds in the morning. Maybe they can't see well at nights neither so they are always out to gobble the rubbish we have thrown out in the morning light.

I text the kid that I miss her stupid jokes.

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Fucking tourists, am I right? Not me, obviously. Look at all of these other meatbags, they are vultures with hollow eyes, just hungry, hungry, hungry all the time for God knows what. Addicts of some kind, I swear. Entire industries now, in the old heartlands of Europe, rose, rise up to serve them. Tour guides, souvenirs, brochures and promo materials. Food stalls. Beggars and crimes, too. Entire industries, now.

I fall in line in the queue to the museum, waiting for my own tourist's pass into the famous place. I want to see what the fuss is all about. I remember she said that she'd like to see the grandmasters' works, once. She can be really air-headed like that, but I think it's all put on. That kid has ancient eyes.

Maybe she has been here once.

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Poor people are the same everywhere. They got that one smell about them: abandonment. No one cares about the homeless except to tell them off to go somewhere else not visible. I understand. It makes things awkward when you have shit and you don't want to share. Sure. I don't pretend that I have always been of means. There was a time that I asked Jack Renton, who was someone that everyone pretends to know back where I'm from, the kind of fellow who has everything and who is always going to get more in his life. The rich gets richer.

Anyway, I happen to know Jack because he was a runaway or maybe he was just lost and was too embarrassed to say that he was lost and I let him crash on my couch for two days, and people never believed me when I told them this story but it's the truth. It is. I'm telling you that I was taking the rubbish out and he was standing right there in my backyard, looking hard at the sky, frowning until his forehead was all lines.

I tell people that I was cool as heck, but the truth is that I thought I was dreaming so I just started to giggle like a little boy until Jack asked me- "What is wrong with you."

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Moving from city to city. All the tongues sound gibberish. There are weird people outside of this hostel that puts black mannequins on their fucking balconies. I like them, whoever they are. The balconies are too damn small to do anything humanly dignified in, anyway. Maybe except smoking. Smoking and crying. Might as well place fashionable friends, forever perfect in their figures.

The kid tells me that we will replace everything with robots in the future. She's quite into saying things like that. Future this, future that. I don't know if it's because she is bleak or maybe she's trying to make me feel better about the world. Maybe both. She once says that there is a service that would help people pretend that they have a boyfriend or a girlfriend to their families. Comes with an app and everything. Photos and text messages.

"Hi, babe, sorry I can't make it this time, but here's a photo of a cat I saw just now. Miss you."

It's a strange new world, yeah?

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The thing that I asked Jack wasn't anything ground-breaking. It was money. I asked if he'd give me ten thousand dollars, because I was sick of being nobody and I said- "I'll be some body if I have money."

He was, at that time, running around with artists and some of those new people that came from Denmark or Sweden or some place like that. They were really okay. The kind of people that you'd want as friends because they are always trying to be decent. Look, they are okay, right? I mean, I couldn't stand them for a long time, but they are okay by me. You know? I write stories about them having murdered people secretly in their basements.

So, Jack was worried about me, in the way that rich people knows how to worry and he was asking me stupid questions- "What happens when the money runs out?"

God, I was very annoyed back then, and I say- "Then I will no longer be some body, yeah?"

Anyway, at the end, he gave me the money because I wouldn't shut up about it, so now I am in Europe, looking at famous things, walking through famous places, being some body.

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Train again. Out of one country and into another like James Bond in a mission. The kid hasn't texted me back since day before yesterday. She was mid-sentence, too.

"A woman smiles at me today and tells me that-"

I look around and see people coming and going. I look up and see the roof of the station. It curves like a giant rib cage of steel and glass. I am Gepetto inside the whale. I look back down and pick a person at random and smile at them. It is a young man with shaggy hair, wearing t-shirt with Charlie Hebdo's print on it, and I tell him-

"Hi, babe, sorry I can't come with you this time, but here's a smile for you to keep forever."

I push ahead and find my train. Put the backpack into the overhead compartment and catches the guy still looking at my direction. I imagine the kid in his stead and I wave.

In the future there will be robot-friends. But today, I.

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Photos taken with my Canon EOS 5D Mark III.