Mercy on ye…
who noticed that the mouse-car moment has gone silent for two full weeks. I was abroad, and then returned to a debilitating illness and a slew of responsibilities. I had pieces to share, but none reached that standard we strive for here at the Moment. In my first free hour in four weeks I want to touch base, offer some updates, and present a few mouse-car minis to keep the vultures at bay.
The main takeaway of this post is I have two pieces on the way, and will begin intermittently posting short stories here alongside the essays you’ve come to mildly appreciate.
On Central Europe
My travels took me along the length of the Danube, with a couple of outliers. Some notes:
Rome— is essentially Los Angeles and thus, pretty uninteresting to me. It is a sprawling metropolitan with a dry, dusty heat, and even though it is the center of mind-boggling cultural contributions, this doesn’t make for a pleasant city to be in. Like LA, the truly extravagant draws are plenty, but hard to access and separated by seas of mediocrity. Like LA, the people are distractingly beautiful and don’t intend on giving you the time of day. They speak their own language and don’t intend to suffer your non-Roman tongues.
Prague— is every bit the charming and inspiring haven it is promised to be. The beer is incredible, the nightlife is incredible, the opportunity to strike up a conversation with someone from any corner of the globe is limitless and the street-food is comforting, and befitting of a boggy nation not unfamiliar with hardship. You can simultaneously understand why Kundera had to leave and Bohumil had to stay. You can feel the strolls Einstein took with Kafka, with Planck. You can understand why it was there that Einstein gave up on Quantum (ultimately correct), to pursue Relativity (a limited Truth). I have no idea how much anything cost because it was one of five currencies I used on my trip and by week #2 I stopped converting. I met more Polish and Ukranian people than anyone else, and spent a dizzying seven hours with a high-school classmate who I haven’t spoken to since graduation.
Vienna— the star of the trip. It is the rare nexus of old-world charm, new age industrial hipsterism, well operated bureaucracy, civic engagement and affordability. It is Berlin if Berlin was less scathed by the W*r and not filled with Germans. It is Brooklyn if people in Brooklyn were really smart. It has me learning German to return for a much longer stay.
Bratislava— A mere hour away from Vienna, you are certainly in a different world. While many Polish and Czech citizens are adamant that they live in Central— not Eastern— Europe, this line goes from blurry to bold in Slovakia. You are in the bloc. The architecture has descended from the baroque into the medieval, the State becomes clumsy (the population of Bratislava is only guessed at to an error of plus-or-minus 200,000) and filled with chilling excitement. You are no longer snugly under the Western cloak, things are less certain, and it’s awesome.
Budapest— Who knows what’s happening here. Fairy-tale architecture, madness in the streets, a dizzying blend of cuisines and cultures…. this is about the time I started feeling exhausted, and this city did not help. Loved it. Spoke with only one Hungarian my entire time there.
Istanbul— At fifteen million, by far the largest city I’ve ever been in. This was by far the least familiar land I’ve ever stepped foot in, leagues beyond Peru or El Salvador or Slovakia, and not a moment went by without this made clear. The third former capital of the Roman Empire I visited on this trip, I was struck how few strands of the West survive in this city. I walked over rubble under massive Turkish flags beside portraits of Erdogan. It is a singular experience to look over the Bosphorous Strait or the Sea of Marmara and think of the history which unfolded there, all the while viewing a skyline unlike any other to a magnitude only topped by a few other cities. It was enough to just walk to feel all of this. The Bazaar, the oldest market on earth, is alive and well and overwhelming. The last thing I wanted to do while contemplating Byzantium and DaVinci was participate in egregious consumerism, and I’m embarrassed to say all I bought in Istanbul was three post cards. The Turkish people I met were severe and extremely unfriendly, except for one shopkeeper who was eerily calm and insightful, and who had the same eyes as my grandfather and who looked at me as an ally, though one he’d betray in an instant should I misstep. Wild experience, and my dreams for a few nights after were very strange and Eastern-influenced.
As a general point, I went to one museum the entire trip and visited almost none of the things you’re supposed to visit. The trip was mainly me sitting at cafés and pondering, and it was some of the best pondering I’ve done in ages. After three years of traveling the US extensively (nearly every state visited since the start of Covid), leaving this world for another was pretty transformative. If nothing else, when traveling like that you walk a minimum of 25,000 steps per day, every day for two weeks. This alone is worth the cost.
On Illness
I must’ve caught the Streptococcal pharyngitis in Budapest, and thought I was just exhausted by the time I got to the airport in Turkey, though by touching ground in Chicago had to admit it was full-blown strep, and according to my doctor one of the worst cases they’ve seen. I did not eat Sunday through Tuesday. I did not drink water Saturday through Wednesday (apparently you don’t die without water for three days) and my body is still struggling to re-hydrate. I hardly left my bed for 80 hours and watched seven movies in four days, and am reminded of the absolutely ballistic power of antibiotics. What in holy hell did people do before this stuff besides suffer and die?
Some annoying people say that illness is your bodies way of telling you to slow down, and I reluctantly admit they have a point. What I needed more than anything was to lie, supine in a dark room, and slow my brain and body to one (1) thought and one (1) movement per hour. A week after fully healing I am oddly gaunt, and secretly grateful to purge the weight I put on in my travels, despite all those steps. I was too tired to be distraught by squandering all that inspiration and energy I should have returned with, but my first day out of my illness felt in a way like my actual first day back, and I’m reminded how these things tend to balance themselves out.
On What’s to Come
In the next two weeks I’ll release a piece on the debut album from rapper and good friend Rock Beams— its titled Rorschach and is an absolutely masterful twelve minutes; on Dennis The Menace (no spoilers); and on the U.S. states I’ve visited and my parameters for what it means to visit a place.
Starting this week, I’ll begin posting short stories every four or so posts. This will be behind the paywall, a measly $4 a month. The reason for this is not to grab cash, but because I’m pretty shy about the fiction and want to put some sort of barrier between it and the world. This is a good time to remind everyone that fiction is what I do, and the essays I post on Substack are, in the kindest of terms, the crumbs which fall off the plate. If anything in my posts has ever made you say “huh, interesting,” I guarantee you the fiction will elicit more of a “woah, that’s… wow.”
And as a perennial reminder, my debut novel, a’Crumbling, is available for purchase here. I will do a series of posts soon discussing it in depth, but for the eager amongst you… have at it.
On Being Published
I’m still giddy about being featured in Flat Ink Magazine, and even moreso about having the central spot on their homepage for three full weeks now. This was a strange experience which I’ll write more about later, but I wrote and submitted this piece over two years ago and by the time it was accepted, truly did not remember it. It was a reminder about what a marathon this game is, and will always be my first publish. Find it here.
Some Music
The discovery these last few weeks has been real. Some highlights:
Albums:
Detroit-based rapper Stoop Lee and his LP Blue Version Tape
Horse Jumper of Love, especially their album Horse Jumper of Love
This time of year, anything Hurray for the Riff Raff, but especially the newly mastered first two EPs, It Don’t Mean I Don’t Love You and Young Blood Blues.
Songs:
It Should Have Been Me by Yvonne Flair
Tapestry from an Asteroid by Sun Ra
Some Film
A dizzying few weeks of filmography, highlights:
Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
The Third Man (Orson Welles, 1949)
Howl (Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, 2010)
If I Drop the Ball Again…
I invite you to get your kicks from some of my peers in the Substack world:
Matthew Laniado of the pioneer newsletter brought his game to a whole new level with edition #3, a Bret Easton Ellis-esque take on the LA bar scene, about how to engage with the world as an artist, about dating. Check it here.
Celeste Amidon of Acting My Age pissed me off with a piece about hating Radiohead, in a way which simultaneously proved some of my deeper-held beliefs wrong while causing me to trip on my own personal philosophy. It was delightful. Find it here.