International Hi-Jinx: Episode I // 2004-02-06

Let's just say that every date with destiny, because it occours in real life and not in a film starring Reese Witherspoon or such, invariably has its moments of pure magic and of utter reality.

My odyssey was much of both. Let's examine:

- Being alone on an airplane and the consequent Russian roulette of seat-mates. Blaire, correspondence-course metal-worker from Stratford, Ontario. Has met Kevin Spacey and was thoroughly surprised to find him bi-sexual; contends that Mr. Spacey is still "a nice guy", regardless. He is going to Frankfurt to meet his estranged grandfather. His eyes are the colour of the expensive brand of anti-freeze. He asked many questions. We talked of black holes and quasars, sheet metal, and America. I caught him crying when the lights went down. He explained that he had heard a song on the airplane music-mix that was the favourite of a dear and late friend. I don't know exactly how long he had been crying, I was distracted for some time gazing at a heavy yellow moon barely clearing the right wing. We clung in the time-zone dusk for 9 hours and he took an awkward photo of me as we ascended. I had a feeling he would ask for my email adress, but, having just shared the experiences of eating yogurt from very small containers and supping on raw potato and chicken breast, cutting frozen grapes with orange knives, and further still, gazing at a shirtless Matt Damon for 2 or more hours, him striding with purpose through snow-covered Zurich - I realized that Blaire and I had already been through it all. We had exhausted the spectrum of modern human experience and there was nothing left to share.

- Die Bahn, the German trains. Imagine a really fast train. Imagine that the inside of the train was as clean as the inside of your home, cleaner perhaps. Imagine that the windows were energy-efficient and the seats a plum blue, imagine still that the sitting compartments were made of honey-colored oak and their cool sperical doors of plasticized glass. Imagine.

- My best friend's dormitory in Mannheim is a large-windowed room in one of the three pink vestibules that make up the student housing on a small and quiet street. There is a hot radiator inside, there is dorm room kitch (An erasable message board filled with rude limericks and party memos, a paper flower glued to the topleft. My friend has shortened her name to one syllable, winces when I pronounce it whole.), there are photos of Jose Louis - his presence (even in absentia) in my friend's spiraling life is palpable, she paints her nails a shade called "Siesta". Outside, there is a Renault car dealership accross the street, a white brick barbecue on the lawn under our window. A pocket copy of "Das Kama Sutra" is in the night table, the room smells like Kenzo Flower and overripe fruit. Spain-bound planes plow the azure sky over us as we sleep.

- I called him from a pink pay phone the next morning. It was 11 degrees celsius, december 21. I said, "I'll see you tomorrow" and we laughed because.. it had been four months and once again there we were, under the same sky.

- That night I was alone in the dorm building, the last of the Australians and the British had gone home for Christmas, and my friend to south-eastern Poland that morning. I watched Bullets Over Broadway, Hollywood Ending and The Royal Tennenbaums (twice) on my friend's laptop that night. I fell asleep with my back to the radiator thinking of seastreet and perhaps that Owen Wilson could be stomached afterall, and the next thing I knew it was D-Day... December 22.

- I waited 45 minutes in the rain. I ate a yellow-skinned apple and sang to myself to pass the time. I watched the lisence plates of the cars sliding along the rain-soaked patent leather road, chilled to the bone by the freezing water. After exactly 58 cars with a "D" in the wreath of yellow Euroland stars had passed, there came a car bearing the letter "I", quietly, from the left. And then he was there. And he was just as I remembered, only better. He smelled like gingerbread and chamomille and water. He was warm and solid in my arms, and laughed when I pinched him to test if he was real.

make it so // engage