travel log 1.

FRIDAY 4 MAY.

(On which day I take the boat from Portsmouth, England, to Bilbao, Spain; I have been in Portsmouth two nights and made some new friends, but I left London in a mess, not of my own making)

Bealtaine. No nettle stew on a boat. Instead I suck the tip of my finger, Elizabethan style, and try to catch up with all the people I havent been able to talk to in so long.
What to say when everything is a lie?
What did I do wrong to make everything so false, so flat, so unemotional?
Mister Nobody slips valium into my coffee and stirs the spoon a few times too many. Not at all, its a yellow, a bright diazepam, coated in bright yellow latex, for mellow folk, lilac guitars and brittlesweet banjos. Not for me.
I ve let the fear in, maybe I should toss a dice and let Chance and Chaos take over, if they havent already.
By accident I push the button –
Arsenic and old lace.. hikers and hips.. I meet matriarchs by the meat market..
So a few final words, final Final words,or not final enough, people seem to know or they seem to avoid acknowledging, yeah, I get sad too, I m not always the rock, does that shock you, or did you already realise that I m a mess?
Childrens pictures made out of pasta shapes, my head feels inspired by fusilli, still –

excerpt from ´In Search of the Dice Man´, Luke Rhinehart (pseudonym)
”since we re already under the illusion that we know and have the truth, lying is a good habit to get into. by lying we re freed from the illusion of being right. whenever i think i m a sage i cause nothing but misery, for myself and for others. lying is held in ill-repute primarily because people lie to protect their old egos, rather than create new ones. lying to try to seem consistent, either with oneself or with others, is an act of fear. lying to create something new – and therefore inconsistent with our usual selves – is an act of creativity and aliveness. the first builds more bars on the cage; the second bends them apart so one can walk free.”

”I dont have any personal history,” once said the Yaqui clown (and sage) Don Juan. ‘One day I found out that personal history was no longer necessary for me and, like drinking, I dropped it.’

The Donk Shop. funny. but being abovewater, and seeing chinks of blue briefly through the clouds, its obvious this isnt a submarine.

SUNDAY 6th MAY.

A nightmare to get into Bilbao. It took me over 4 hours to cycle into the city centre from the port. I had a moment of crushing defeat and self-pity after leaving the boat – the feeling that I didnt know what I was doing, I d done it all wrong already, this was a mistake. But it passed, and Zierbena was pretty, and my wheels rolled. Around 8pm I get hungry, and havent even seen a shop, nevermind a supermarket to skip from. But I meet two lads who were on the same ferry for a brief chat, buy bread cheese tomatoes and iced tea in a supermarket, and find a path along the river to Bilbao. Still, its dark when I m going past the maritime museum and the Guggenheim, I have no idea where there might be a hostel, and have to start making decisions about what to do for the night.
I continue along the river, hoping to see a sign for Gernika (the town that was inspiration for Picasso s famous painting), and at midnight the clouds part and the moon is full, and I m feeling very obvious and unsafe on the outskirts of Bilbao. Then theres an oak tree, and two cats playing under it, and the sound of water falling, and although its not a perfect place to sleep outside of (I ve been seen twice already), I make my bed for the night. I m still nervous, so it takes me a while to sleep- but then, it did last night, on the boat, my mind trying to process 5 years of insanity since my last big bicycle journey, and if these are my 60 days in the desert then the first 3 have certainly been memorable..

Today the going is no more easier, it is a hassle to avoid the motorway, the roadsigns do not correspond with my map, and I briefly consider leaving everything behind and starting again –

So the motorway forces me downdowndown, off my route, so I park my bike and head off to find a beer  – completely forgetting its Sunday. But at least its Llodio, a little further along than I thought. Getting faint from searching I buy a tiny beer for e1.50 in a little caf€, the host offers me some gambas, and it begins to drizzle as the alcohol unwinds me so I go to put my bike in shelter. The smells bring me back in time more than anyhting – the fires, the cooking, meat and fish

once the car is eradicated multi-storey carparks can be turned into multi-storey gardens, comrade –

TUESDAY 8th MAY.

arriving in Valladolid I have a laugh with the taxi drivers – I ask one sweetly where I can find a bed for the night – but he says his wife snores so he cant help me – so his friend gives me directions to Pension Argentina, his friend is a lovely chatty woman whose son plays trumpet..

WEDNESDAY 9th MAY.

And that account, yesterday, interrupted by my Bulgarian friend – soon to become friends – and a descent into madness the details of which should maybe not reach paper – just when I was about to start unpicking the knots of my identity crisis, and my jealousy of everyone else who seems so in place (I dare not say settled)
because its even more obvious now that I havent a clue what I m doing, for the now, the future, and the once upon a time…
two magpies, a mountain of peacocks..
its only been a week that I ve been out of London but already its another lifetime, and any loose ends will unravel into an abyss –
its this internal monologue i need to shut down – ”I cant do it”  ”I m fucking up” – It doesnt help me, but then things havent gone as smoothly as the Eastern Europe trip yet, and that was something that taught me a few good, strong things about myself  –
I think to myself I havent been travelling since Seville, and the fight with Stromec, but thats not true, I hung up my saddlebags after Slovakia with Marek, when it was obvious that was as far as we could go, and I was so angry on the train to Bratislava, maybe I shouldnt have shouted at him that nobody would ever love him as much as I loved him, because after all he s a good guy and deserves love, but its amazing the things you ll say (and mean) in the heat of the moment –
Red – i ve got to let him go too, somehow – I think I m becoming less angry about that too, so maybe I can reply to his email soon –

So after a pleasing meal of altramuces, baguette and a little bit of queso tierno, and after fixing my bike rack and seraching for the missing bolt, and ten minutes of lying on the grass and watching the trees waver in the wind, I think I m ready to go
families are everywhere in this town, grandparents pushing the buggy, rampant pregnancies, oh well its not my biological clock ticking but i dont know what it is –
I m tempted to just get the train to Lisbon, but that way I ll never prove to myself that I can do it (again)