far and away, part 2

let me back up a little bit and rejoin the story.

when i was first planning this leg of our adventure, i came across the website for the railroad company ferrobaires that runs the set of track south. after determining the schedule, i figured that the overnight trek would be ideal for us, allowing sleep after the nearly twenty-four hours of airline transport.

i found out the sleeper car was not available, but we decided that the photos of the pullman cars looked comfortable enough to go ahead with the plan. when we arrived at the station, we were told that there were no seats on the pullman cars, or no pullman cars. our choices were classe primera or classe tourista. we went with primera.

first impressions upon entering the vintage 1950s coach:
electric fixtures torn out and dangling wires.
nogahide seats ripped, cut, and torn.
jagged holes in the walls where luggage hooks had long since been absent.
steel doors that don´t quite close.
loose paneling.
grafitti.

the briefly entertained notion of getting off the train then and there quickly disolved against the realities of walking out into the street of buenos aires after dark, not knowing the language or where we might go to lay our heads through the night. we settled in for the long trip through the night.

"settled in" being an entirely optimistic statement.

the train delayed there for some thirty minutes before setting off, rocking and clanking into the setting sun. i would describe the scene out of our window except for the fact that the thick brown dusting of dirt on either side made the exterior world a fuzzy mass of blurred shapes of color, alternating lightness and darkness.

my first thoughts that came to mind were of the quantification of our relative safety. the dome lighting running the length of the car had only half the fixtures working and of those that were, emitted the light of a 40 watt bulb when the train was at full speed. this was rare. at the regular speed the bulbs pushed about 15 watts. would i be robbbed at knifepoint by banditos, stabbed and tossed into the brambles that grew trackside?

far and away, part 1

dec. 25 - 9pm eastern
awoke well before dawn to a quick shower, eating what might go to rot in the fridge, and then hop a taxi to portland international. tam was slow to rise, but once out of bed was a trooper against my oh-so-early alarm. we boarded and flew without incident.

the girl next to me traveling to virginia for the holidays lives a couple of blocks from my old duplex on everett. artist, keeping it together, working on her masters degree. she joins us in a round of scrabble in which we both beat her handily.

ran into dwan at pdx. she´s on her way to india. she was actually on our flight to d.c. before connecting to a flight to switserland and then onward.

just goes to show how small portland really is.

sitting now in dulles int´l waiting for our somewhat delayed flight.

i note that i am anxious in a lot of ways, but not as i was a over a year ago when making the trip to spain. now, i am wondering if i am ´doing the right things´whereas last year i was caught up in the the ´leaving my old life behind´thing with much sadness involved. today, it is almost all fear with only tinges of grief. what will happen to me? where am i going? what will i do? will i be happy? fed? secure? the plane leaves in a few minutes and tam looks at me expectantly. am i doing the right things? is this what we need? questions.

dec. 26 - arrived buenos aires about 10:30 local time. once through customs and the money changers, we taxied to the estacion constitucion where the taxi driver told us to ´be careful´. indeed, this train station sits at the terminus of rail lines extending into the southern suburbs, and judging by the teaming masses of humans clinging to every habitable surface of the commuter trains leaving the station, places fairly low on the economic scale.

we were able to purchase tickets for bahia blanca and had about six hours to burn before the train. tam brilliantly suggested we take the subway (subte) to the central city and have a decent lunch. we hopped on the next train to av de mayo and found a german pub immediately upon exiting the underground.

good food and a litre of beer later (and tam very proud f herself in finding a vegan meal on her first attempt), we walked the several blocks east to the Plaza de Mayo which sits just behind the Casa Rosada (pink house), the office of the president.

the plaza de mayo has become the de facto starting point of all sorts of rallies and protests since the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo began their silent march in demand for full accounting of the dirty war´s Dissapeared. the casa rosada´s balconies being the place where the perons and others spoke platitutes and passionately to throngs of argentines in the square below. the mothers still make their way arounf the square every thursday at 3:30.

today, there were no mothers, but the police were gearing up for some sort of worker´s rally. rows of cops in riot gear were forming and large crowd control vehicles were taking positions around the plaza. the areas adjacent to the casa rosada were ringed with riot fencing and television crews were jockying for prime parking spaces with thier satillite vans.

at least the protests go off on schedule. i´ll get to the trains in a bit.

we returned to the estacion constitucion along with half a million other folks at about 5:30. tam braved the informacion booth to ascertain the track our train was supposed to be on. after waiting some time, we boarded our coach, anxious to be away from the city and a good night´s sleep on the overnight trek. i was disillusioned in a matter of seconds.

Arrived

Walking and talking in Bahia Blanca. We are alive and safe. More to come.

Cheers,
w

getting a hard-on for jesus

i was sitting in the passenger seat of the van in the parking lot of a mexican grocery. night. the sky was overcast and the conversation mundane. i looked though the window to the sky and a billowing cone of cloud was descending out of the cover. lit from the city lights it came ever forward at us, then taking on a chromium-plated appearance. closer and closer until it could not be denied that this finger of god was pointed directly at me.

as soon as i entertained the notion that it was in fact a finger of god, the energies of the thing barreled down and through the glass and into my chest. waves of energy flowed directly to my heart muscle then scattering as through a prism out into the bone and sinew of the rest of my body. i levitated out of my seat and into a relaxed rigor mortis. my arms outstretched into the symbol of the christ's cruxifixion. as reason fell into suspension of disbelief, the cells of my body became charged and excited, increasing in intensity as each iota of doubt crashed. my whole body vibrated into multiple orgasms, my penis rock hard for jesus.

i awoke, flabbergasted, tingling and exhausted.

i dressed, made coffee. went out on the stoop for a cigarette, where crow sat above and laughed, cackling at my dumbfoundedness.

hey santa, get you groove on!

photos from portland's santacon are in the gallery or just click here.






ho.

thank you!

thanks to all the folks who came down for my reading/release party at Grendel's Coffee House last night. i became overwhelmed at more than one point at the beauty and grace of your presence. special thanks to ZigZag for reading her powerful work and helping set a framework around the evening. my utmost gratitude to Space Pirate Tam for all her support and work in making the event happen!

love and sprockets,
~w