come, take a walking-trip through happiness.

munich, do you remember new year’s eve two thousand two? we were in bogenhausen, or maybe berg am laim, i can’t remember and that is strange because i usually can remember everything about you. we ate pasta with gorgonzola and raspberry tiramisu at the bar and then at midnight we walked outside and people were simply lighting fireworks in the middle of the street. the air was lit red and blue and green with a thick cloud of smoke hovering not far above our heads. then we went to lenbachplatz to drink prosecco and in the bar bathroom i ripped off my tights and threw them away. in the karlsplatz s-bahn station i crouched on the floor, using all of my energy to not throw up all over the platform, then i almost died on the way to fröttmaning and spent the next three days in the bed next to the radiator. that was the second worst new year’s eve i spent in europe.

one month. i am always writing a love letter, to this place. i am not being hyperbolic. it is perfect romance distilled into the  symmetrical bricks that make up the sidewalks, the phonebooths with pink lights, the smell of the subway stations. westfriedhof is one of my favorites, and the one i always go back to: the walls are a cavernous grey, huge dome-like lamps painted primary colors line the ceiling. this was the first station i went to just because, because i’d read about ingo maurer in a travel magazine, because i wanted to sit on the steely chairs, because i had no business being there at all. the station always seems cold, so i can only stand to remain for two or three trains to come and go in both directions, then i get back on, in the direction of the hauptbahnhof. that one- a labyrinthine marvel of a station. you can walk all the way to stachus underground, it smells like bread, cigarette smoke, motion. the hauptbahnhof is confusing sort of like the german language itself- if you don’t understand it, it could probably make you have a nervous breakdown. all i want is to roam the levels- dodging people waiting for the s-bahnen that come every minute, or loitering on the bustling platforms of the U1 or U2 lines. the signs are all computerized now, the trains are as punctual and schedules as exact as one would expect from the germans. i remember my first visit, even then the old signboards were coming to the end of their useful lives: the plastic cards flipping around to reflect the next arriving train. all i want, is to hear the gentle whoosh of those signs again. all i want, is to study the delicate sans serifs on the streetsigns indicating which direction: weinstrasse, kaufingerstrasse, rindermarkt. ich will nur: die welt aus bayern. thirty-one days.

how nice it is to be able to say i want to go to new zealand and plane tickets are bought and you are off to a distant island nation just like that. i didn’t care about life for a good six weeks beforehand, i didn’t care about the snow that kept coming or the sight of his legs in the backseat of the car, a crack in the windshield or a blown out bike tire. from the end of february until the morning of the day we left- when i drove through the grocery store parking lot in an exultant haze from the thrill of: getting to leave.

from the moment of getting on the plane in la and looking out the window and turning to danielle saying, this plane is going to take us to new zealand- to breathing the cold morning auckland air thirteen hours later, dense and dewy and flawless. i said i am going across the pacific ocean and then we went across the pacific ocean just like that. it is always far more profound than the hours, isn’t it- the voyage, it is always a pilgrimage to purge myself of lethargy and apathy. either two days or twenty five hours later, sitting on the driver’s side, not driving, traversing the twisted roads along the coast, the lapis autumn ocean water stretching forever. my tragic relationship with oceans is revealed- i like to be near them, over them, in front of them, but i can’t be convinced to allow my body in one. i said i wanted to see the ocean and we drove after church and we saw the ocean just like that. wandering along the high cliffs of moeraki, i imagined what my toes would feel if i could put my feet in the water, would the sand be hard and gritty, or soft and cushiony? i imagined the waves wrapping seaweed around my ankles. i am afraid of being swallowed, i am afraid of being enveloped, all i can think about is how deep the water is and where it might eventually meet another coast: in this case, antarctica, it must be.

i didn’t say i wanted to go to the end of the world but we were at the end of the world just like that, looking out forever now, yeah. an hour on a patch of emerald coast until we couldn’t walk any farther. the disparateness of such a landscape and where i came from: sidewalks and indistinguishable houses surrounded by fields of corn that are dead for most of the year. i suppose the things we come to take for granted are all relative. it is nice to roam a place that came to be without any kind of human intervention. my home is a place that was made just for people to live and constantly move- out there you can’t do anything but stop when there isn’t any farther to go. all you can do is stand and listen to the sea otters and waves while sucking in misty ocean air to purify your lungs.

the last vestige of australia, purchased tullamarine airport 3 june 2008.