The rails crossed over eachother in a tangle of lines like words in a puzzle and they threw the ashes out the window with the goldfish vomit of the small Spanish children who cried at the whistle of the train. They gathered the rail cars in the yard of all nations and the rust guard waved us the final maze miles like checkers and chess. It was hard to fit the whole world in one city.

We came over bridges and tossed the sacks of corn husks and ashes out the window into the water and the whislte sounded and Mark took Eve up to the front of the train and spoke with her earnestly and I watched their mouths move and thier eyes meet and I felt suddenly alone and worried and I wished that the Spaniard two seats up would stop muttering: “Somos todos que van a morir.” It was getting on my nerves.

The land flattened out and the Turks road beside the rails in a convoy of old school buses and dump trucks. The women waved out the windows and the Turks waved back and it all seemd very merry untill the Spaniard two seats up started crying. He’d seemed tough as nails in his red tunic and cone hat, but we were getting close now to the Capitol and everything was coming unglued.

Then the Rust Guard stopped the train in the lower foothills. They checked everyone’s papers and confiscated the eggs from out of the tall, cone shaped hats. The guard demanded to know what we were doing amongst the Spanish and we pointed out that we were from New York and he grunted and moved down the aisles looking for more eggs. When the hats were all empty, the spanish refused to put them back on. They left them on seats, littering the train like forgotten ice cream cones and the train went on more slowly down towards the Capitol.

In the morning we came out of the mountains and outside the window you could see the crowds lined up beside the tracks. They looked worried and cold and we rushed by them in a wind.

In the train, the Spanish cooked eggs in iron frying pans that they heated with the bright blue flames of a plumber’s aceytelene torch. They held the pan with wool mittens and they kept the precious eggs in the absurdly tall hats they wore. They would reach into the them like a magician and produce a magic breakfast. They made some for us in exchange for vidigraphs that they showed around the train to riotous laughter. Eve had been right. It was becoming like a fiesta.

We rode up into the night hills with the lines of wires written against the sky in India ink.
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I said we’d pay for the Polish in the impolite smell of cabbage and threw my vote in with the Spanish. The train was filled with smiles and nervous laughter and later in the night we passed the Polish coming the other way. They shown like white petals on a black bow.

We all met at the station to try and make it to the Capitol in time. There was all the paper work to fill out, or face deportation. The first train was filled with Spaniards and Eve thought they sounded like fun as far as this trip could be any fun. She said the Spanish could figure out a way to make anything feel like a fiesta. The next train would be filled with Poles and Mark thought they sounded better. He said, they would have Vodka. It was going to be a long hot journey and we had a choice between the Polish and the Spaniards and we sat in the Station drinking coffee and trying to decide how to put a pleasant shine on the whole disaster.

here

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Something is wrong with the robot. It seems to have lost its sense of direction. When it comes alive, I find it spinning in innocence, or sulking in the dark, dirty corners, whirring and worrying. Something is wrong with the robot. It is blue out of the blue and spinning, always spinnning, like a small, light thing falling towards earth.

Pentatonic

press play

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We waited out in the car with the rain and watching the wipers when something was playing on the radio. I’d heard it before countless times and I will hear it again the same.
Listen:

She said, ” They are all of them stuck in Kindergarten: palying with paint - banging on drums - playing dress up and make believe. They have to grow up some time… It’s sick.”

I said, “What? You’re acting like it was my dream.”

“Well you’re the one telling it to me.”

“I’m just telling you what he told me.”

“He’s a good looking guy, but …. I mean, It’s sick,” she said. “It’s the sickest thing I’ve ever heard. Your friend is sick. All your friends are sick… sick musicians… sick actors… sick painters… they’re all sick…. sick in the head… sick in the heart.. sick in the soul, if they have one….just plain sick.”

“It’s not their dream,” I said.

“No, but they’re sick all the same,” she said. “All their dreams are sick.”

“They’re just men… all guys are sort of disgusting… I shouldn’t have told you….”

“And you’re the vilest of them all … just for having friends like that… It’s sick.”

I said, “What?”

Larry came in from the coast where he’d done two underwear commercials in as many months.

I said, “Look at you: the new face of ass.”

We headed downtown towards a coffee shop we used to spend too much time in. He was a good looking guy, in a sort of normal way and I could see how they’d want him to sell their briefs.
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They hold onto the night with the Lanterns and the last beer… it goes and goes into the morning always thinning down and blue. They drift home with their masks and their drums held sideways. It is back to the tram and the train and the home and the horror of day to day life, where death is always close by, but harldly anyone ever dresses like him. It’s three in the morning there and I still hear them piping in the streets, but a little less and a little less.

Here it is already the last day of Fasnacht and I am listening to the Guggen Music as night falls on Basel, six hours and few thousand miles away. The Guggen bands play pop music (as opposed to all that 17th century drum and fife stuff). It is where the blue note gets to ring a little jazz into the streets. They are brass bands with lots of percussion and you find people dancing to the music. Doesn’t have quite the charm of the other, but makes up for it in general New Orleans (before the flood) style good times. It’s the stuff that more or less sounds like a parade to most people.




and they dance that night away alone, or in crowds.

Fasnacht in the daylight is colorful and crowded with sausages and confetti, but at night and later into the night, the crowds thin down and vagabond groups form up to play impromptu concerts. Lone charivari drummers snake off into the medievil alleys (gasse) and you fall in behind them walking and walking with only the occaisonal break for white wine, or the good Basel beer and then you follow a solo piper like a fairy tale of lost childhood back in and around and around the city till you sometime sleep, still dreaming all that music.

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I am more or less sick as a dog and so I’m feeling no desire to be super creative. So I think for the next three days, I’ll just watch fasnacht on line and draw that and sleep, etc…. A vicarious carnival. It’s fun to play this with the Eternal Return below.

Happy Fasnacht. You can watch it live on the web here and visit last year’s drawing here.

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“Do you have to eat so fucking much?” she asked.

He grabbed a slice of bread and took a bite.
“It’s the body of Christ,” he said, spitting messianic crumbs. “What are you, an atheist?”

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Press play for words:

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