Here

DAY 5

Last night as I tried to sleep — the house is a two bedroom — I could hear Arianne. She was mumbling to herself while pacing. At least that's what it sounded like. I heard her rifle through the kitchen drawer and imagined her choosing a butter knife with which to finish me. I fall back asleep.

I'm an early riser but she even took that away from me by being an earlier riser. I wait until I hear her leave and then get up and head out myself.

I walk the beach and surrounding neighbourhoods and wonder how lunch with the landlord-cop is going to go.

I stop at La Botigueta and get some terrific veg, including the best carrots I've ever had. But when I return home, I find that Arianne has already done all the shopping and seems slightly perturbed about my purchase.

She's making rice and fish. As she stirs, she stares out the window. "He's the one that's doing it," she says. I look over her shoulder. In the distance, maybe 400 feet, I see another house. No people. Does she maybe mean the dog?

I change the subject, ask how often she gets to the beach. Does she like the area? She confesses she rarely leaves the house. "Not one more minute in this town," she says.

Mateo arrives and we quickly hit it off. When I tell him I sell records, he immediately starts talking music. I hate talking music but humour him. I also help him with some phone stuff — he's having issues and maybe I know how to fix them. He's no longer concerned about who is going to be staying in his house.

We exchange numbers and when he leaves, I ask Arianne if she wants to buy her plane tickets now. She says we will have to use my phone. I say that's fine, as long as she doesn't use my credit card. Not even a smile.

She explains what she wants: Spain to the Maldives, stopping in Abu Dhabi for four days. Only wants to fly in one direction, no flight longer than six hours. No layovers.

Takes me four hours to figure it out. The fastest I can get rid of her is two days from now. An eternity when your host is armed with a butterknife.

I ask again if maybe she wants to show me around. She declines, muttering a word in a language I don't recognize under her breath.

Along a path I sense someone ahead of me in the bushes. It's Mateo. I say Hi and he walks along beside me so I stop. He needs to talk to me. He points back at the house, saying, "She... what is the word..." He points his finger at his head and swirls it through the air, the universal symbol for scrambled brains.

"Paranoid," I say, and Mateo stabs the air between us.

"That's the word! Paranoid!"

"Yes," I say.

"You'll take care of my house?"

"I'll certainly try," I say.

He nods, offers his hand. We shake and go our separate ways.

Of course, I walk.

Love the colors of the buildings here.

Toronto would have a collective aneurysm if someone painted a building that color.

DAY 4

I spend the morning in Valencia, then buy a ticket to Oliva, about 80km south. While waiting for the bus, I meet an American couple who are heading to Cullera. They are incredulous when they find out I've been hired from Canada to cat sit.

The bus ride is cheap at 8,10 euro, but my mother would say it was the milk run. I almost miss my stop but get the driver to pull over again.

Call Joe the British cabbie, who is expecting me. "Five minutes," he says, and is there in three. "To Arianne's house?" Si, I nod. "Are you good friends?" he asks.

"I've never met her."

A look of concern on his face. Inside, I panic. Something amuck. I should have asked more questions before boarding that plane.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

"I don't understand."

"She's hired me to look after her cat while she travels."

"Didn't you say you were from Canada?!"

"Yes."

"And you're here for 3 months?"

"Yes."

Another puzzling look. Something is definitely amuck. We arrive at the house. I pay him and he asks if he should wait. I tell him no and he drives off.

Locked gate. I consider climbing it, but wait. Ten minutes and out she comes, saying she didn't hear me calling. Is she what I expected? What did I expect? "It's hot, let's go inside." An accent, but not a Spanish one.

She introduces Blanche, the cat. My charge. Instantly, I know she's going to be a nightmare.

Arianne offers lunch and I accept. Fish and rice. The two bedroom house is charming. "How long have you lived here?"

"A few months."

"And you're off on vacation so soon?"

"I'm already on vacation. This isn't my house."

"I'm sorry?"

Arianne rented the house for a year. Paid in advance. After seven months, she wants to leave. "They've found me."

"Who?"

She doesn't answer. The expression on her face is either, "You know who," or "I'm not sure I can trust you with that information." I remember the look on the cabbie's face.

She paces the kitchen holding a butter knife. "Tomorrow, Mateo will join us for lunch."

"Who's Mateo?"

"This is his house. He wants to meet you. He says he never agreed to another 'tenant'. He's not happy I've hired you. He's police. Retired." Great.

"Tomorrow? For lunch?" She nods. "But what time's your flight?" I ask.

"I haven't bought my ticket yet. I was hoping you'd help me with that. No point using my phone. Lets talk about it tomorrow. You should take a walk. Get to know the area."

"Do you want to join me? Show me the area?"

"I've seen enough of this town to last a lifetime," she says.

I walk the beach.

Day 3

Woke early. Packed, grab a frittata on the way to the train.

Rode 328KM south to Valencia.

Train ride mostly uneventful. Sat next to an American stand-up comic with a sad sack story about losing all his money on his European tour. Didn't laugh once.

Another AirBnB, this one more "factory."

Walked just under 10K. Museums. Basilicas. Much porcelain. Grotesques and gargoyles abound. Delicious Charcuterie and the worst Martini I've ever had. Unimaginably bad.

I am older than the Font Del Túria, but it has me beat in beauty, poise, and bird shit.

I think Valencia is the most beautiful city I've ever seen.

DAY 2

Hit a few bookstores and am impressed with the Spanish editions. Wonderful paper, slick covers, great design. Once again wonder why British editions are so dreadful compared to other countries'.

Taifa Llibres is particularly wonderful, as is Libreria LA Central. Toronto just doesn't have stores like these. Killed by greedy landlords, Heather Reisman, etc. I consider picking up something I know cover-to-cover thinking it'll help learn the language. Jesus' Son? Silly idea. Brain is absolutely useless for learning new things right now.

Walk the streets towards Park Güell, see some great graffiti.

Spend most of the day in the Park and Gaudi's house. Am rather fond of his bedroom.

Head to Elephanta. Meet Anabel Caravaca and am charmed. Write a bad poem, which she takes. Stay way too long, but not long enough, unfortunately. Have to catch a train to Valencia in the morning. Will catch up with her online.

Head home to get some sleep. 11.3KM covered. Lightweight.

DAY 1

Direct from YYZ to BCN. Easy flight. (Aren't they all?) Arrive 10:36am.

SIM card. Sandwich. Metro to the AirBnB in the Gracia neighborhood to drop off my bag and get my key.

Marble stairs, 3 flights. The door is huge + heavy. Mariano shakes my hand, shows me the room, explains the fussy shower.

Head back out. Fantastic bookstores with gorgeously designed and printed books. Pick up a copy of Good Morning, Midnight. Walk. Beautiful architecture everywhere.

The busiest streets I've ever seen. Street corners that somehow aren't. Genius. Scooters everywhere.

Walk to Restaurant Casa Delfin for lunch. So good.

Lots of walking.

715PM — Grab a cocktail at Solange. Read from the Rhys novel. Inspired by a particular passage, I jot in my notebook:

A woman. A nice woman A nice, beautiful woman. A very nice, beautiful woman. It's going to be different this time...

People-watch. Think about working on the novel. Grab the bill.

More walking. Dinner on the rooftop of the Hotel Casa Fuster.

Work a bit on LVGR. Tighten:

I'd tell you I paid good money for the boy, but that's not entirely true because the child wasn't expensive and the money wasn't earned by honest work. I killed a man for it and the cost didn't even eat up what remained after seven months of party and drink.

My wife had always wanted a child and I had always wanted a son so the purchase quelled both our longings. But things change when you swap money for blood. Your life gets harder. Your luck turns. Things fall apart.

For my wife, punishment came as a cancer. For my daughter, it came as a curse, though she wouldn't call it that. "Clarity of identity," she'd say. Something I can never claim for myself. As for me, punishment's still coming, a vision on the horizon I fear is not a mirage.

Unlike my kid, I've never felt I had an identity. I don't know who "I" am or what "me" means. So unaware of what I did not know, I didn't even know I didn't know it. She made me aware of what I lacked, Siobhan. It's an Irish name. Chose it herself. We'd named her Steven, April and I.

1130PM — Head down to the street.

Youth chill in the evening air:

Midnight — arrive back at Mariano's. Total distance walked, 17.8KM.

I have a bit of a fascination with "time-tracking" devices that do not tell you the time. These days, I wear an Apple Watch Ultra 2 for health reasons. For many years, I wore a DURR.

What's a DURR? You wear it on your wrist, like a watch, and every 5 minutes, it touches you. Yes, really.

Here's how the designer pitched it:

It's an interesting thing to have something silently tell you that five minutes have passed since the last time it told you five minutes had passed. And yes, it does nothing else and the five minute interval is fixed.

My DURR looks like this:

The chassis and buckle are milled, sandblasted anodized aluminium. The strap is vegetanned leather. It takes a standard CR2032 watch battery. Mine's been kickin' for 10+ years, though I did have a few panicked days when I thought it was on the fritz. Turns out CR2032s have a high rate of failure.

When not using it to make me hyperaware of time itself, I used it as a navigation tool. I walk a lot and know how fast I do it. So, morning-wake-up, I'd look at a map to see where I wanted to end up. Then, I'd memorize a pattern of turns based on five minute intervals. Like this: 3 Left, 2 right, 1 left, 5, look for the tunnel, 2 right... This meant I would walk for 3 vibrations (15 minutes) and then turn left, walk for 2 vibrations (10 minutes) and turn right, etc. Obviously, this was not an exact science as I'd get waylaid by friendly dogs, people, buildings I wanted to photograph, not-friendly dogs, talkative prostitutes, curious locals, etc.

I'd usually arrive at my destination without again checking a map, though I never got there in the estimated time and rarely spoke the local language enough to understand road signs. The clumsiness of my method resulted in many adventures and many fantastic misadventures. I walked thousands and thousands of miles this way. In LA, in Spain, in Vanuatu, Cuba, the Dominican, and Toronto.

Only 700 DURR exist — 1000 were made, 300 of which didn't function. I regret not buying one or two more when I had the chance. They were made by industrial designer-artist duo, Skrekkogle, and if I remember correctly were about $150. The partnership has dissolved and the two men behind it have vowed to never make more. When I thought mine had died, I pleaded with one of them to let me know if he had any kicking around that he would part with... he didn't respond.

For a few years I tried to get industrial designers I knew to develop one with me on Kickstarter. They all thought I was nuts. Last year, someone else did exactly that and sold about a $150,000 worth. I initially funded the project but backed out, not liking the proprietary band (it's the only thing I don't like about my DURR); I wanted it to take a standard watch band.

If you're still confused how the DURR can actually be useful, here's some press on the Alpha version from The Verge. Mine was the Beta release. And here's a physician talking for a couple minutes about his own Beta release:

In the next Products I Love post, I'll write about the keyboard in my DURR photo: the WayTools Textblade, a truly remarkable device that never saw the light of day.

Santa Monica

Back home
I dream of the water
beyond the break
and wake older
angry at borders
that keep me foreign
and dry.

Did my wretched ancestors
who walked inward
abandoning shorelines
and settling centered
fear the power
tides gift me?

And will my absence
pull from both coasts
to my landlocked city
salt water so deep
as to drown
their evil
guiding star?

— July, 2017, Toronto

Your Call Pulses Through Me With A Glorious Dynamism

I've felt this wave before,
in Havana and Piles, too. 
You were with me, then,
and the water senses your absence.
I lay back and conspire with the tide.
The sunlit Santa Monica sky turns black and star-pricked.
I drift, whispering your name,
until I feel your faint but unmistakable touch.

— December, 2017, Santa Monica

It happened. That strange sort of serendipitous coincidence thing.

I contacted Elisa Gabbert for the first time to ask about the release date of the audio version for her new book. (Her previous collection, The Unreality of Memory, is genius.) I had considered doing this many times over the last few months but ended up doing it today. We emailed a bit, and then I looked at her website again, following links that led me to a NYTimes piece where she does a close read of Auden. In it, she writes of Brueghel's painting, The Fall of Icarus, which is mentioned in the poet's Musée des Beaux Arts.

Hours later, I'm on a walk, listening to an audiobook of Maggie O'Farrell's I Am, I Am, I Am and she writes about the same painting. I don't even care what the odds are. What I want to know is What is this?! What happened here? — And yes, I'm aware of pattern recognition and confirmation bias, but this seems beyond. Does it not? (Obviously, I need Gabbert to write about it so I can understand it.)

I am listening to the O'Farrell book, which is subtitled Seventeen Brushes With Death, because for years now I've considered a project called My Death Inches. I'll write about all the injuries I've suffered and how each inches me closer to death.

I had the idea while in Spain. I was wearing shorts and a straw hat. I sat down, crossed my left ankle over my right leg, and popped my hat onto my raised knee. The heat from my head had warmed the hat, which then warmed my knee. I wondered if that escaping heat — that transfer of energy — took some of my remaining life with it. I wrote a poem about it, and the poem made me think I should document my kidney stones and many fractures, my food poisonings and bike accidents and shower slips, the animal attacks, the overwhelming wildfires and crushing, lung-filling salt water, the broken glass, broken bones, and broken spirit.

There was the time I wouldn't stop crying as a toddler and the babysitter fed me rum to shut me up. I had to be rushed to emergency to have my two-year-old stomach pumped. Was my life shortened by this ordeal? Or the time M—— and I decided to try unfamiliar fruits each Thursday. That week was Mangosteen. I didn't know it wasn't ripe and I didn't know that unless ripe, it's all but impossible to open. The knife slipped, the serrated knife slipped, and cut the first knuckle of my left index finger to the bone. ("Bone white is very white," as Keanu Reeves says.) I should have gone to the emergency room, but: I didn't want the date to end. It wasn't even a real date. I don't think she was interested in me in that way. But I didn't want the night to end. Didn't want to say goodbye. So I held that finger under unbearably cold water as long as I could and M—— wrapped it in gauze as I grimaced and groaned. Then, we drank cheap plonk and talked for hours while the sun came up and the bandage filled with blood.

Obviously, I'm still alive. I didn't bleed out. I'm alright. You can't bleed out from a finger, no matter how deep the cut, can you? And it's pathetic, right? The whole thing — not paying attention while slicing is pathetic; neglecting the wound is pathetic; being so lonely you'd risk losing part of a digit or fainting from blood loss is pathetic.

Did that knife move me a little closer to death? Who can say? I do have a permanent lump on that knuckle. Twenty-five years later — tonight — I'm stroking it with my thumb. It has a tiny significance. What is that significance? Of what is it made? Is it misaligned bone? Severed nerve endings aching to reconnect? Or did my skin heal over and trap forever a manifestation of a memory of when I was so needing someone to love me that pain meant nothing — and, for the rest of my days, I could touch it and be back with M—— in that kitchen, both of us wanting to taste new fruit, but neither of us aware that it just wasn't time.