All that you touch and all that you see

Life has moved quickly and slowly in the past few days, like a river of molten rock, or even slower, like the way glass might pool up if you swung it for a long period at high velocity. My final moments in Wroclaw.:



I speak to Dan and hear some frightening news about how he was mugged on the street the previous night in Wroclaw. It unsettles me, makes my skin feel like it is cast in clay, each hair pulling and dragging with any move I make, and if I sit still it just cakes and cakes. It isn't that I am afraid for myself, it isn't that I like Wroclaw any less. I am suddenly conspicuously aware that this is not my place, that maybe nowhere is my place. A wanderer attacked is a wanderer identified, and I was self-identifying. The girls can tell something is wrong, they reassure me my friend is fine. "I know," I say, but suddenly the world around me is a dark room and I am a struggling point of light, swaying and wavering, flickering and scattering.

I spend the day wandering the old and new towns of with Arletta and Klaudia. The walk over was interesting as we strolled through an underpass covered in graffiti and past a running but abandoned circus on the side of the highway. The parks are filled with interesting statues placed on some sort of invisible grid and the Panorama is closed. A government building swarms with police. Their eyes from beneath their caps make me feel uncomfortable, scrutinized. This is my fault, for I see them in a role, performers rather than true people who are the main characters of their own stories.

Walking in mostly silence with Arletta and Klaudia I realize it has only taken us a day or so to become truly comfortable with each other. That is amazing. Strolling along foreign streets, breaking the silence only to giggle and share some interesting observation,  I begin to feel better. I feel as if my light is joined with others, and the borders between as we grow closer in silence are more and more difficult to distinguish. Like bright candle flames, pressed together. You cannot see the individual flames, and in the brightness, the wicks also disappear.

We walk over a promise bridge, a love bridge, covered in locks. They seem to have one in each European city. It makes me feel that love is strong, is a bridge, is practical, is physical.

The cathedral towers over the old city, but inside it is quiet, gold, and serious. A few older women pray in different sections. I think a face in prayer is perhaps at its most beautiful.

It turns out we cannot climb the spires right now, so I stop a moment to lap up the life-giving water of this place and then we head out into the Polish sun.

We wander between churches for a bit, criss-crossing the city but always remaining close to the river which breaks it up. We go to the church of Magdalen and I get to climb up to the top for what is the equivalent of 1 USD. Climbing the stairs I pass may fascinating platforms and small nooks with chairs, broken tiles, grilling, wires, and papers strewn about. At the top of the stairs a door leads out onto a narrow stretch of building between the two towers of the church. The whole world is a very narrow bridge and the most important part is not to be afraid. Kol ha'olam kulo, gesher sar m'od. V'ha ikar, lo lefached klal.

I lift myself onto the edge. I am afraid but I do not know what fear is exactly. Sometimes it has power over me, and sometimes I can simply view it as in a microscope. What a peculiar thing is fear. The city lazes in a foggy yellow industrial smog, perforated by the sun's rays from above and the sharp edges of man's houses of work and worship from below.

We go to get a beer or two in a pub. We pass by a beautiful flower market and I stop to smell the flowers. Climbing down below street level into the pub I notice the hours posted on the door. When asked, Arletta tells me that pubs like this close when the last person leaves. We go down into the smoking room so the girls can drink and I find myself in a room of Dali paintings illuminated by hazy red light. Many other young people lie around in the room, sipping beer, writing in notebooks, smoking cigarettes. 

I love this place. I order a few beers (in polish!) and bring them back to my table of wonderful new friends. Pola comes to meet us. We get into some serious discussions about creativity, manner of speech, and where to place trust. After another few beers we head to a traditional communist style restaurant complete with the red and white tablecloths, old propaganda on the walls, and a front counter where you order all your food (above which is the menu in increments of 4 zlottei [drinks], 8 zlottei, 12 zlottei, or 16 zlottei. I have a delicious honey beer and croquette with beet root soup. The food is amazing and very cheap. I get to try everyone's dishes, one of which is simply latkes.

We end the night by meeting Marta and their friend Bobo and going to the vespa. We have a few beers staring out at the water, talking about politics and tv. Bobo is obviously very intelligent but also unhappy. He is a writer like me, and we instantly connect. His face is all bruised up from a fight he lost the other night, but his eyes flash awareness even through his external drunken demeanor. The lights of the university race across the water to us, trading color with the echoes of all the students carousing across the island, the picture shimmers in my mind. I cannot tell if I am viewing this all in the water or not. 

Tomorrow I leave for Vienna. It's all about accepting and moving with, like water, if it's all about anything. The anxiety of the 27th, which began with news of Dan's mugging, washes off of me. I know I will live. I am always, so i take control of it by releasing control. Only as creators can we destroy. The metal which had grafted my bones now slides down, pooling at my feet, before running off into the river and then the ocean. All water toward the ocean.

In the morning I cook eggs, clean up a bit, and hug all the girls goodbye. Pola gives me a beautiful 5 zlottei coin with a polish poet on it. I will not forget these wonderful, unique, growing people. I make my way to the bus stop to take the free bus to the highway mall.

At the bus stop: it's amazing all these people are the centers of their own worlds and such strange worlds to me. They do not even think about it, like me; there is a totally natural and unconscious acceptance of one's own world. For a moment I am light headed. I see little shimmers around each person that passes, like ripples in the water, like visible vibrations in some plasma medium we all move through. The vibrations from them are the same as those around me and I move out from my own head so that I see all these ripples from an unfixed sliding perspective. The vibrations mingle, mix, move outward in new waves, stronger, weaker, changed, and in different directions. The people themselves are just these ripples, anything is. And then it's life which aims to make ripples, see itself, cause change, create. Not will to power but will to creation. All centers, this is the only way it works- Capitalism tries to emulate this, but organizing into larger groups, systems, individuals, corporations, nations always is in the interest of more power. More power for what? The capitalist structure relies on this question not being asked. Please don't take this for anti-capitalist propaganda but I think the capitalist economic structure has outlived its usefulness and now only inhibits an otherwise potentially free and loving collection of life. I long for the time when on a massive scale people open their eyes to what has previously been the blind pursuit of power for itself.

Climbing onto the bus, I am giddy and gleeful. I love this, the excitement of a pursuit, even a mundane one such as getting from place to place. I want to be a doer. I have found I must simply do and delight in it.

On the bus to Auchan, there is a fantastically beautiful girl. She sits straight up with her hands folded and gorgeous un-makeupped skin. She often looks about and bites her lip. Our eyes meet. For a second we hold, then she looks away into the window. In one way, I will never see her again. But I have that moment; that moment will never pass.

Walking from the parking lot across a highway bridge to the gas station (the same one I came to when I got into Wroclaw) I run into a scrappy looking wire of a kid with the thick single curls of a poodle. His name is Norbert Kowalik and he is 19. He is hitchhiking for the day, out of Wroclaw and back, because he has class in Wroclaw the next day. What an amazing day activity. We decide to head to Krakow together and make our signs. As we do a car pulls up offering us a ride to Krakow. We get in with another hitchhiker, a woman named Gosha. Norberts English is pretty good, good enough that exchanging nouns and unconjugated verbs we can communicate. Gosha speaks about no English. Pyotric, the driver, speaks very little english but in his portliness is so obviosly friendly and happy that little communication is required. He is studying law and was just in Rome to see the Pope. I am a bit tired as the car rolls on but I know I cannot fall asleep. Nortbert's mother does not know he is hitchhiking. Bahn in polish means Mr. In the car I figure out it is not a good idea for me to go to Krakow on the way to Wien. Norbert and I try to figure out a different route on the fly. Finding a good road to aim for we tell pyotric but he misunderstands and takes the next exit off. We end up in the middle of nowhere.

We spend a fair amount of time driving down a narrow country road through very religious small polish towns.

Pyotric drops me off on a small cutoff of the highway where buses can stop and cars can pull over for the driver to take a leak. It's a bad spot to hitch but I thank him anyway and smile Norbert and Gosha off. I stand basically out in the highway with my sign for Wieden(Vienna) and Bielsko-Biala. Cars whizz by. Nobody stops, I don't even get many smiles or acknowledgement in any form. At the first signs of worry I calm myself and remember to enjoy the ride, the experience, the fact that I am alive and doing. It is all unbelievably wonderful. 

A car pulls over, with two goonish looking guys in it. At a genuine toothless grin from the one in the passenger seat who says, "we can take you to a better hitching spot" i get in. Bartek and Matt are frustrated by the lack of work in Poland and have been roaming Europe for work, as they were unable to secure American visas. They drop me off at a place on the highway where there is roadwork so the cars have to slow to pass through one lane. Much better. But kids keep passing my backpack on the side of the road with their bikes. I worry they will steal it until I remember how good people are.

In about an hour a tiny blue car pulls off to the side and I'm not sure if they are having car problems or picking me up. Turns out they are offering me a ride. Adrienna is the drivers name, a very pretty leathery woman in her early 40's. Her mother, Magosha, is utterly silent throughout the whole ride. Adrienna was just picking her mother up from the hospital. I don't know what for, but it seems to have had an impact on her. I try to put out as much positive energy as possible, talking often, complimenting and thanking them. Turns out they are Jewish! I find this out from the menorah and star of david hanging from the mirror. What a detective I am.

They take me to a station in Cezyn, just on the border of Poland and the Czech Republic. It is a perfect spot for hitching and has bathrooms! I wash up and start a conversation with the woman manning the bathroom entrance. She speaks no English so maybe its not a conversation but I convey I am hitching to Vien, and she conveys how her son or her husband when he was younger was hitching and had lots of fun but slept out in the cold. Language is no barrier.

It only take another 30 minutes for someone to pull over right at the border. I lean in the window to see the driver and am confronted by the pruned face of an old german gentleman cracked in one of the broadest smiles, designed for a cackle, that I have ever seen. 

He speaks no English, only German, Polish, and a little Russian. He is going all the way to Vien! We are able to speak using hand gestures and the little bit of Russian he knows. Henry is a very dirty old man. He chugs a red bull and teaches me German swears and naughty words. Quite perverted he talks about all the women we pass on the road, and some of the men as well. Getting a sense for this old man I think he has a good heart, but one stilted and crossed and concretely lined with ingrained senses, opinions, and prejudices. I tell him I am also a catholic because it is definitely the right thing to do. We have a laugh about how God watches us have sex. This is all conveyed without a common language. Lots of gesturing.

For hours we converse with nothing but our hands and a bit of russian. 

What an interesting old perv. He buys me coffee at a rest stop and we stop so he can have a smoke. The cute waitress does not know what to make of us and tries to speak to me in what sounds like Czech. I just laugh and shake my head. Thank her (yokoy) and go on my way. We are arriving in Vienna, past the miles of vinyards, just as the sun is setting. The clouds march bravely to the end, backlit to the horizon point as it gapes and sucks them up like a cosmic vacuum.

Henry drops me off right by Klemens's flat, the guy I met on couchsurfing. Klemens picks me up and I drop my stuff off in his room. What a place he has! So his own. The walls are covered in art and bicycle parts and old photographs. In his room there is a loft, a hammock, an old projector, and a beautiful chandelier.

After shooting the shit for a bit, Klemens gives me the keys to the apartment and heads off to his girlfriends house. I head out to explore Vienna. I walk down the main road, Mariahstilfer, which is packed with commercial advertisements, big brand name shops, and kebap stands. I pass a few churches and fountains, even on this extremely commercial street. As I get to the museum quarter I begin to get a real feel for Vienna: the cavernous spaces between gilded monoliths, the statues pressing boldly forth into the crisp night mist, the well-dressed 20-somethings strolling alongside handsome older men and women down the unabashedly historic streets. I walk for a long time, strolling through gardens to gaze at statues and the hapsburg palaces.

 I go into an interesting looking cafe around midnight to get a Viennese beer. The place is packed with 2 large parties of inebriated middle aged locals and a few couples on the outskirts. A jukebox is playing 70's music. I settle down with my beer and decide to find a quietness amongst this boisterous atmosphere. I pull out my pad and paper and write.
____
Going out on the a4
"It's the road to Braitslava"
pigeon gliding over the au(strian)phalt with lecherous
yellow grins pounding at the windows with a toothless sun,
under the road I feel a cemetery rising,
bursting.
and a whisper in the ear is
the same as two fingers in the pocket
and a clever word is as good as raw
as good as admitting your eyes are closed.
Never fall asleep in a hitched ride.

Never fall asleep in a hitched ride.
But wait, and touch, waiting with dirty ever-grasping hands.
Touch the wrong side of streets and unreadable schedule signs. Touch
the danger and open, empty alone.
It falls over the fingers like running water, it does.
"Jesus, but you're a catholic aren't yo-ah?" Sure.
And a racist. And an Irishman, proud.
And an old smoker. Always,
"the lying stops here,

I will stop lying."
But water flows, words
pass over lips as herd of buffalo under the sun and grass,
as gulls before the storm.
Go out over the foam again and remember the beer-change.
Head out on the open road with a pen in hand
and something simple in mind. A place.

Never get to Bratislava.
Sit at the cafe and change the whole room with a leg up and an aloneness which fills.
Eat the ink.
Stab into the night and bleed out.
Lose to Vienna what's lost to Vienna.
It wasn't the a4 at all, or it was, but 

it changed.

In any case,
the sun is down now.
And a step onto the street is
as good as making love. If you do it right.
If you do it right,
make love.

____

The next day is one of complete inspiration. I LOVE going to see art by myself. I can go at my own pace, spend half an hour in front of one exhibition just thinking and appreciating without the need to say anything, express anything, formulate myself into some transferrable commodity.

I start the day with some of Klemens' flatmates. They are such unique individuals, amazing people.  I drink a full cup of espresso. Oops.

I go to the kunsthalle to see some contemporary art by Urs Fischer and an art photography exhibit called Vanity. Both are some of the most stimulating, inspiring, beautiful, fascinating, startling, challenging things I have ever seen.

I will share some of the pictures from Urs Fischer with you. 

I think his work is very much open and I would hate to tell you how to think of the pieces. I will say that the wax man melting with his head hanging and hands clasped over the table is one of my favorite pieces of art ever. I identify with im very strongly, with his melting bottles, his inner fires consuming him and eating away, so that he is not a husk because from the outside to you can see the openings, the fire, what has melted and dripped down, what has changed and what remains. Much of Fischer's work is dealing with wax and fire, with consumption and things that cannot help but change.

The photography exhibit, Vanity, is even more startling for me because I have NEVER really paid attention to fashion photography before. I have only seen some of Cindy's work but never considered it in a broader, more massive scale. Vanity is all photography from FC Gundlach collection, specially picked to show the many differences in approach and aim, content and manifestation, presentation and representation of fashion photography. Are these photographs more determinative of the world they represent than simply representative? How much can that world really be said to exist? I am fascinated by so many photographers, by Wols's surreal works with shadow and twisted shapes as they mimick the human body and vice-versa, by Armin Morbach as he makes/keeps women sexy behind logos and harm and mutilation and ugliness and unwearable clothes. One photographer used edited photos from google earth to represent the style of one moment. Another took a picture of lots of naked little girls in a small new york city bed.

No photographs, I am told, but I can write! The arbitrariness of rules strikes me. I am a more effective writer than photographer I think, atleast in terms of representing things for myself. Also, what if I were a fantastic sketch master? Technology dissolves as much as it divides.

The pictures speak with chrome but out faces and purposeful shadows. A picture of an idol moving with the sharp cut of splice on google street view: one knows he is on camera. And one knows when one is an exhibition.

You are always paying for an experience. This is the philosophy of anywhere you pay to see or watch or listen or be in a place. You are paying for the full, complete experience not just your sight for that time. Contemporary art takes hold of more of the experience I think, the artist takes more control.

Why not the old hapsburg portraits and water to your knees, in water, cellophaned over like satan's wings beating. Over it all you're served wine by animal hands out of the wall and allen ginsberg tells you muffledly in hazy unfocused sound about america.

I go down to the video archive and watch a 20 minute movie by Jordan Wolfson called "Con Leche". This is a brilliant peace of post-modern art, with cartoon drawn classic bottles of diet coke filled with identically spilling and disappearing white liquid marching down real deserted industrial streets as a woman reads news and information about Kate Moss and Cocaine, about food, about reincarnation, while she is constantly being interrupted by the voice of the actual artist telling her "a little louder, please" "could you normalize your tone, please" which plays directly into your ear. As the video turns to the topic or reincarnation the video swings out, leaving the bottle for a bit, focusing on the emtpy street as it talks about the preservation of something beyond life when life disappears that reappears again in another life and then the movie swings back onto a bottle (the same bottle?) still walking.

Why do we have the viewpoint that everything is spending? Spending time, time is money, etc. Why is that the natural orientation? Why not receiving? Even better, it is not coming or going to us.

Next I go to Hofsburg, the hapsburg palaces, to check out the collection of armor and weapons. 

Yay. Also the ticket gives me access to musical instruments museum and the ephesus museum( city conquered by Romans). 

The weapons are so cool,

 I see instruments played by Schubert, Wagner, Mozart, Beethoven, and listen to their music as I walk through.

 Wagner and Beethoven are my favorite composers of all time.

I wander a bit through the historically walled center of the city.

 

Jealousy

I lose track of time and forget to meet Klemens for lunch. Oops. I go into a beautiful St. Michael Church and meditate for a bit. 

I forget to eat or drink anything until about 4pm. Oops. 

 I get some noodles and head into the park. I sit feeling the trees and wind and palaces. 

In front of me, some yout's are drinking and one falls in a small pond (maybe is pushed). He immediately strips naked amongst riotous laughter and puts on some new clothes. He must have been freezing. Before heading back to Klemens' flat I go to St. Stephen's cathedral. The place is huge, is dark and serious, but filled with tourists. To the sides are people praying amongst hordes of flickering candles. I sit and pray for a bit, trying  to incorporate of of these candles of this moment into myself.

As I leave it begins to rain. Everyone in the packed square panicks and runs to different shops or to open umbrellas or otherwise escape the rain. Moving away. I walk down the center of the near deserted pedestrian street laughing at the beauty of the place. Rain brings happiness to me. It slicks everything down with darker, deeper color and a shine of some inner glow. 

I get back to hangout with Klemens, his girlfriend, and flatmates. We eat delicious bananacurry and share music. We talk for a long time and they help me organize my trip to Italy. Very kind people, and very very good English speakers.

The next day I sleep in then go to OBB at Westbanhoff to get my Vorteils card and ticket to Milan. After spending only 1.80 euro to get from amsterdam to vienna it hurts to spend almost 100 euros on one ticket. But I hear from most people it is very difficult to hitchhike in Italy, it's illegal, and I know I couldn't do Vienna to Parma in one day anyway. So it's ok.

I use public transport to get from Westbanhoff to Secession, the art church founded by Klimt in the interest of always keeping art in the eyes, hearts, minds of the city and never letting it stagnate. The motto on the front is "to every age, its art. to art its freedom." I don't buy any tickets. On the last train a woman comes around with a ticket checker. My heart rate goes up, but I stay calm. Almost at my stop. As she approaches me, I hold  up a finger and make an exasperated face. I begin frenziedly digging through each of my pockets in turn, looking casually up at her as she moves around me to check everyone's tickets. As the doors open at Karlsplatz I keep my head low and slip behind he back out onto the platform, then up the stairs onto the street. Whew. 

In front of Secession, I realize there are only 20 minutes until I'm supposed to meet Klemens back at his flat. I am not disappointment. All of this is experience, experiencing Vienna. None of life is better or worse but that we make it so.

I spend the remainder of the day with Klemens. He takes me to a courtbuilding where his father usually takes him. After going through metal detectors we are in a tremendously impressive marble palace looking building. 

A huge statue of Justice with a golden sword hangs out over the place. The hallways, floors, ceilings are intricately decorated. We joke a lot, we get along well. Klemens looks very imposing in all black with a hat, trenchcoat and red scarf. But he is very goofy and easy going. We go out on the roof of the place for a gorgeous view.

We go through the university, again with stunning architecture which requires unfathomable riches to build. Everything feels so old and strong. It will last. 

Statues of famous graduates/professors like Schrodinger and Doppler dot the courtyard of the university, all surrounding a statue of a woman, a muse. 

In the interest of equal rights, an artist put a shadow of a woman in stones on the ground of the courtyard, because all the busts around it are of men. Klemens tells me there are much more serious fraternities here, that they still have knife fights and it's a point of pride to have a scar along your cheek.

Next we go through the naschmarkt with its delicious smells and stalls. I get what is basically fried dough filled with cheese and spinach. So good. Klemens shows me along backroads to many gorgeous statues and buildings of Vienna, 

the 3(4) rivers which meet Vienna

Monument to the russian soldier

Shady neighborhood

then to a secret, giant second-hand warehouse. 

I love places like this, thrift shops and antique stores.

Klemens and I then part ways, he to a date with his girlfriend and I to the opera. I follow a group of tourists who look like they are going to the opera, but they lead me to the wrong performance.

  I lightly jog to the right place and manage to buy a student ticket minutes before the performance starts. I am absolutely the worst dressed person there. 

In my flannel and jeans, I am surround be women in long flowing dresses and men in suits, dinner jackets, tuxes. It is an interesting feeling, but I am not embarrassed. I only feel bad if it is important to some of these people that they have the perfect preserved atmosphere of the opera that I may be ruining. I get to my booth just beside the stage and sit down next to a gorgeous older woman in a long black dress which bares her shoulders. The man next to her is visibly perturbed by my presence. I smile. He keeps muttering, about me I think. Keep muttering. You're the center of your world and I love you for it. 

Tosca is beyond words. 

My box

The arias, the voices, the passion. "How I want to see you in my arms, inflamed with passion." At one of the breaks I get to talking with the woman next to me. We hit it off. She came from Romania to see the opera. She is very beautiful with strikingly dark eyes which sink and sink. As we talk she flirtatiously lays her hand on my wrist. I think I should ask her for a drink after the opera. Then I realize I have neither the money to take a woman like this out, nor the knowledge of the city. Plus my host is counting on spending the rest of the night with me. Oh well.

Tosca is one of the best things I have seen performed. What an amazing experience. "Oh God, Scarpia." Curtain.

I walk back to the flat stupefied by the beauty, the mastery of what I have just seen. 

I get back and there are all of the flatmates and a bunch of friends in the kitchen. We get to drinking and laughing. As the night winds down only a few of us remain having political discussions about capitalism, america, israel, identity. Then it is just Mishe and I and we have a very good conversation about experience, about striving, about peace and oneness. We get to bed a little after 5.

The next day is my last. I go to Secession. I spend almost 2 hours with the Beethoven frieze by Klimt. This is art. I write a poem:

Genii clouds reaching into each other
across cracks in the paved world,
the swirls of their hair-mist, have sleeping faces

 behind and above their reaching- speak peace.

Beyond the knight, but night, staring out with determinationveiled fear,

white eyes of women seeing spirits behind.
He is well armed.
But the road on through clouds to the domineering skeleton,
hovering over, with her breasts, the snake tormented three (and fates).
She stares with some knowledge

faces with eyes behind cry out with none, how
thoroughly modern they are through, and through
desperate fragment patterns line their bodies

and a great grr furr monster holds them all.
He's scared too, he has eyes, two like too, they shine with something like somethings,

his breasts heave as he breathes, barely
in the wind of a climate controlled room.
His arm is huge and separate,
resting on head, not his but a skull
below.

Some feathers indicate a great jangling bird carrying the whole scene
and jewels along the pregnant arm show a knowledge of future scenes-

the future se(a)ems another wall
but the redhead with eyes in her hair is the most beautiful
and can hold you there in the swirls of her hair like hyacinths
until you see she's turned next from looking out
to down, from red
to grey: all unconcealed body,
blank nudity and pain, alone
over a snake sea of skills with planet center
pulling in the nets with its gaping mouth:
the skeleton holds nothing now beside the great gravity.

But escaping it are the genii, who were merely painted over,
flying out again, out of oils they ride
in gold, gold now into poetry
-into the bugled horns of harp-faces
contingently caring and arguing over

the peacing, smiling head of my curly young mother.

(all symbols for themselves)

they hover in released bliss of my mother's hands.
Her dress is broken by the sun. All symbols

for themselves, the fingers say.
They say, "I am playing a harp on a wall,
and I am reaching,
and I am not. Look at the open eye of wall beyond me, no symbol or sound
(unbound)

If you move through the 3 fates have red hair in ecstacy,

the choir sings on in multiplicity,
The ground is flowers miles below,

and unraveled Beethoven embraces the muse in the altar of the sun and moon and the golden misty swirls of all things ending.

[the string does not hold his muscled mass anymore, it only bluely pushes his knees by his feet to his lover]

______

This experience is worth so much more than the 5 euro entrance fee, and there is still more. I go upstairs to Michael Snow's exhibition. There is a room with 4 piano solos playing simultaneously. This sounds chaotic altogether but still presents a unified experience- this is the world as composed by individuals: each is a full solo, a journey.

I think of the people next to me. Are people in an art gallery really totally given over to being presented with an experience? If I pee'd all over myself and stripped down, would they quickly return to a normal, societal way of viewing this? Of course, I do not do this. Just a though experiment, don't get too excited.

In the cube, is an exhibition by Rudolf Stingel. He is a brilliant painter. To paint with such realism, precisin, and talent but at the same time have such a contemporary/surreal mindset and way of presenting things is truly unimaginable for me.

I leave secession totally inspired and ready to view the world as all art, all beauty. I wander throughout Vienna, remembering these are my last hours here, perhaps forever.

Dude dressed ridiculously, dancing to no music. He made a bunch 

 I go to a bike fair outside the town hall and see some of the guys from the flat. They love biking. I get some free food and watch bmx'ers for a while.

Then I move on to a protest going on in front of a beautiful building, it may be part of the university. In front of an old, masterfully crafted statue and picturesque building stand crowds of people in v for vendetta masks all shouting in a language I do not understand. 

I am a bit frightened as I approach, until I smell marijuanna. Then I know the character of the demonstration and I relax. They are protesting the invasions of privacy by governments and organizations on the internet and they are emphasizing the importance of the free flow of information on the internet. These two seem to almost clash in my mind, but I let it go.

I get back to the flat, pack up my things, say goodbye to my amazing new friend Klemens and his flatmates and make my way to the train station.

Waiting for the train to Milan I meet Leo, a homeless Mayan Italian, who peddles homemade jewelry. I approach him because he has huge metal Koru (spiral) earings and other Koru's tatoo'd on his face. I approach him, pulling out my Koru necklace to show him we are connected. We speak of philosophy, the connectedness of all things, how many cultures share this one symbol of the spiral and its meaning. He talks to me of being homeless in Vienna and how the addicts woke him up at night to try and make him smoke crystal. He says he had some trouble with skinheads too, but they left him alone because he looks mexican and scary. I thank my lucky stars for my situation. I get some food and share it with him. He is a fascinating, loving man. He does not do drugs and is a pacifist, though he looks like a Mexican gangmember with all his tatoos. When the train comes we must part ways.

I get into the train, put on Beethoven's first symphony and sleep until Milan. The train from Milan to Parma is short and when I get off and walk up the stairs I see Chris, that beautiful soul who is so classic and strong, so intelligent and perceptive, so nervous and social, so traditional and loving. Now I am with him in Parma.

I have found a piece of home here. I feel cradled in the love of my friend and his new place. Nice (pronounced Knee-chay) has welcomed me like a mother. I am able to relax perhaps the most in my travels since Ireland. This is very, very good.

Until next time. Peace and much much love.

Parma soon. The teasers:

And there is nothing greater than this. Than the sun above and the movement of molecules within me and against me. Not more than the reasons the tree's grow or the way my chest feels as I embrace my friend. I expect no more. No heaven, no greater realm, no forms, no transcendence. Just this.